Women and New and Africana Religions (Women and Religion in the World)

Women and New and Africana Religions

Women and New and Africana Religions LILLIAN ASHCRAFT-EASON, DARNISE C. MARTIN, AND OYERONKE OLADEMO, EDITORS

Women and Religion in the World Cheryl A. Kirk-Duggan, Lillian Ashcraft-Eason, and Karen Jo Torjesen, Series Editors

PRAEGER

An Imprint of ABC-CLIO, LLC

Copyright 2010 by Lillian Ashcraft-Eason, Darnise C. Martin, and Oyeronke Olademo All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review, without prior permission in writing from the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Women and new and Africana religions / Lillian Ashcraft-Eason, Darnise C. Martin, and Oyeronke Olademo, editors. p. cm. — (Women and religion in the world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–275–99156–2 (hardcover : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–313–08272–6 (ebook) 1. Women—Religious life. 2. Women and religion. I. Ashcraft-Eason, Lillian. II. Martin, Darnise C. III. Olademo, Oyeronke. BL625.7.W627 2010 299.6082—dc22 2009020760 14 13 12 11 10

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This book is also available on the World Wide Web as an eBook. Visit www.abc-clio.com for details. ABC-CLIO, LLC 130 Cremona Drive, P.O. Box 1911 Santa Barbara, California 93116-1911 This book is printed on acid-free paper Manufactured in the United States of America

Contents Introduction—Lillian Ashcraft-Eason, Darnise C. Martin, and Oyeronke Olademo

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PART I. WOMEN, FAMILY, AND ENVIRONMENT 1. ‘‘That Girl Is Poison’’: White Supremacy, Anxiety, and the Conflation of Women and Food in the Nation of Islam Stephen C. Finley and Margarita L. Simon 2. Receiving, Embodying, and Sharing ‘‘Divine Wisdom’’: Women in the Nation of Gods and Earths 29 Felicia M. Miyakawa PART II. SOCIOECONOMICS, POLITICS, AND AUTHORITY 3. The Living Shrine: Life and Meaning in Oyotunji Yeyefini Efunbolade 4. Vodou: A Heritage of Power Susheel Bibbs

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PART III. MIND, BODY, AND SPIRIT 5. Serving the Spirits, Healing the Person: Women in Afro-Brazilian Religions 101 Kelly E. Hayes 6. Sacred Dance-Drumming: Reciprocation and Contention within African Belief Systems in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area 123 Halifu Osumare

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PART IV. SEXUALITY, POWER, AND VULNERABILITY 7. To Have and to Hold: Possession Performance in Afro-Cuban Regla de Ocha 145 Katherine Johanna Hagedorn 8. African Descendent Women and Religion: Diaspora in Oriente Cuba 167 Jualynne E. Dodson 9. Religion and Women’s Sexuality in Africa: The Intersection of Power and Vulnerability 191 Oyeronke Olademo PART V. WOMEN, WORLD VIEW, AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICE 10. A Religion of the Interstices: Asian Pacific American Women and Multiple Religious Practices 207 Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier 11. Diana’s Grove: An Emergent, Integrative Spiritual Movement 231 Susan E. Hill, John K. Simmons, and Cynthea Jones 12. The Good Wife: The Religious Experience of Women in Scientology 255 Dawn L. Hutchinson 13. Senses of Place: Women Greening Communities Kimberly Whitney

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14. African Women in Traditional Religions: Illustrations from Kenya 301 Mary Nyangweso Wangila Suggested Reading 323 About the Editors and Contributors Index 333

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Introduction Lillian Ashcraft-Eason, Darnise C. Martin, and Oyeronke Olademo

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his volume provides insight into the experiences of contemporary women in New Religions and Africana Religions selected from diverse parts of the world. The Africana Religions are categorized as Creole and African Indigenous—the latter of which sometimes is used interchangeably with African Traditional Religions. The five-part thematic organization of the chapters in this volume places the New, Creole, and African Indigenous Religions in a context of religious and cultural diversity that might have been lost had we incorporated them into a volume of more mainstream religions. Unless one had the opportunity to read all of the volumes in this series, the variety and number of New and Africana systems of belief, theology, practice, and ritual might not be accessible or appreciated. Thus, a volume dedicated to New and Africana Religions seems fitting for our purpose of increasing awareness of women and religious diversity. Consequently, we give space and voice to these religions and, in particular, to the women who affirm them. Some of these traditions developed in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and so can be clearly categorized as falling within the New Religions Movement. Others, particularly the Creole Religions, are actually syncretized versions from older African Indigenous and other systems; some of these religions date back as far as the sixteenth century. We include these because their emergence has brought something new to the American cultural contexts in which they were formed. The African Indigenous Religions emerged with the autochthenes—the cultural self-starters in Africa—and

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are so ancient that their origins only can be approximated as having occurred in the Primeval Era, evolving over millennia into the institutions that we know today. Thus, this broad time frame seems to be a reasonable one for situating the foregoing chapters on New Religions and Africana Religions.

NEW RELIGIONS There are obvious issues associated with the New Religions concept. Questions are raised that require thoughtful responses: What or who determines that a religion is new, and new in relation to what? Does new mean less legitimate in some way? Are these religions understood to be marginal in relation to the more mainstream or established traditions by their literary location? The New Religious Movement (NRM) refers to a genre of religions that is novel to a physical and cultural environment and that presents, in the face of the ‘‘old’’ or established religious institutions, unfamiliar doctrines, styles of worship, or ways of life. Many scholars are at work in this area, as evidenced by the body of scholarship on New Religions, including academic journals dedicated to this subject and its formal presence as a program unit at the Annual Meetings of the American Academy of Religion and the Society of Biblical Literature. We, too—as religion scholars and editors of this volume—seek to provide place, context, and understanding regarding religions that might otherwise remain in the shadowy underside of religious studies. While defining a religion or set of religions is tenuous, J. Gordon Melton’s description of New Religions is helpful, both in thinking about their nature and in determining parameters: ‘‘New Religions are those . . . that have been found, from the perspective of the dominant religious communities, . . . to be not just different, but [sometimes] unacceptably different.’’1 It is generally the case that New Religions exist in ‘‘contested spaces.’’2 The aptness of these descriptions is borne out in the narratives of chapters on the Nation of Islam, the Nation of Gods and Earths, the multiple religious practices of Asian Pacific American Women, the Diana’s Grove spiritual movement, Scientology, and the greening communities.

AFRICANA RELIGIONS We have appropriated the term Africana Religions to refer to both Creole Religions (i.e., African religions transplanted to the Americas by enslaved Africans and African religions recently reclaimed and practiced by African Americans) and African Indigenous Religions. The term Africana encapsulates the plurality and uniqueness of the Afro- (Continental African

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and Diasporan American) religious experiences. Thus, we chose to use Africana in the title of this volume in order to affirm the plurality that Africana connotes.

CREOLE RELIGIONS For the convenience of situating chapters in this volume, by Creole we mean religions that emerged in the Americas. These are innovative and syncretic variants of African Indigenous Religions intermingled with Christian, Amerindian, Islamic, and other conventions and folkloric practices. These Creole Religions present a far-flung multicultural tapestry. Margarite Fernandez Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert have inferred the essence of the racial, social, and political significances of these religions in their book, Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santeria to Obeah and Espiritismo (Religion, Race, and Ethnicity).3 Moving beyond the geographical boundaries that conventionally defined these religions, we embrace the religious syncretism and multiculturalism in Creole Religions that have emerged throughout the Americas. Chapters on life and meaning in Oyotunji, empowerment in Vodou, AfroBrazilian Religions, sacred dance and African belief in the San FranciscoOakland Bay Area, Afro-Cuban Regla de Ocha, and African Diasporan Religions in Oriente Cuba explore faiths that are representative of the multicultural, Creole traditions.

AFRICAN INDIGENOUS RELIGIONS From a geographical perspective, the Indigenous Religions of the Africans have received many labels over the years from African and nonAfrican scholars alike. The chosen nomenclature by any scholar is largely informed by perspective. Whereas some scholars describe these religions as ‘‘African Traditional Religions’’4 and African Indigenous Religions, these references may be used interchangeably and some use the simple title ‘‘African Religions.’’5 African Indigenous Religions are the earliest cultural expressions of the diverse and original peoples of the continent. They fall under a variety of names that suggest indigenous ethic groupings: Akan, Nupe, Ewe, Luo, Gambia, and Yoruba religions. These are distinguished from colonizing religions, like Christianity and Islam, that have now been successfully domesticated by Africans. Even though African Indigenous Religions have been affected by change, there is still the possibility of setting them apart from the colonizing religions. However, the possibility of demarcating these religions does not preclude the mutual influence of practices and cultures.

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Consequently, the leadership roles of women in African Indigenous Religions, as opposed to other religions appropriated by the Africans, compel new methods for the assessment of women participating in and influenced by religions. In this volume, selected Indigenous Religions of Western and Eastern regions of Africa are explored in chapters on religion and women’s sexuality in Africa and women in Indigenous Religions in Kenya. The authors utilize the historical method while appropriating lenses of other disciplines for a gendered-social analysis. To understand the role and place of women in African Indigenous Religions is to access the authenticity and vibrancy of these religions. This is because women are the sustaining dynamic of these religions.6 Presently, women occupy important roles and actively participate at all levels within Indigenous Religions. With every intention of serving the female agenda, they have introduced innovative rituals and perspectives into their religions.

THEMATIC SCHEME AND CONTENT The presentation of chapters in this volume reflects our desire to address thematic topics that also are treated in other volumes of this series on Women and Religion in the World: (I) Women, Family, and Environment, (II) Socioeconomics, Politics, and Authority, (III) Mind, Body, and Spirit, (IV) Sexuality, Power, and Vulnerability, and (V) Women, World View, and Religious Practice. The chapters within each part represent specific women’s religious involvement with respect to the overarching theme. Overall, we seek to represent specificity within diversity. Part I begins with a chapter by Stephen C. Finley and Margarita L. Simon on women’s practices within the Nation of Islam (NOI), titled ‘‘ ‘That Girl Is Poison’: White Supremacy, Anxiety, and the Conflation of Women and Food in the Nation of Islam.’’ The authors seek to explore and expose women’s voices in the Nation of Islam as they assert their own agency and humanity, in response to the negative meanings that were constructed in the Nation of Islam, conflating women with unhealthy foods. Felicia M. Miyakawa also contributes a chapter, ‘‘Receiving, Embodying, and Sharing ‘Divine Wisdom’: Women in the Nation of Gods and Earths.’’ This is a New Religion sometimes referred to as the Five Percent Nation. Miyakawa first outlines how earths (women) receive their spiritual training and briefly discusses major tenets of Five Percenter spiritual doctrines. She gives particular emphasis to family dynamics in light of the nominal patriarchal structure and women’s expected roles within the home. In Part II, Yeyefini Efunbolade writes ‘‘The Living Shrine: Life and Meaning in Oyotunji.’’ She relates her personal experiences of living in

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Oyotunji African Village, an encampment founded in 1971 in Sheldon, South Carolina, where followers of the Ifa/Yoruba tradition made their communal home according to their own theological and cultural traditions, sacred verses, and rituals. Efunbolade describes the lifestyle of the village, including living as queen and priestess within the complexities of a polygamous community. Ultimately, she describes her motivation to develop her own adult self-empowerment workshops. Susheel Bibbs, contributes ‘‘Vodou: A Heritage of Power.’’ This chapter is a comprehensive and yet personal treatment of Vodou that challenges the theories and perceptions embraced by some scholars. It explains how ‘‘professional women’’ have decided to ‘‘become mambo.’’ This chapter emerges from the author’s own research in civil and ecclesiastical records, nineteenth- and twentiethcentury newspapers, Works Progress Administration (WPA) Louisiana Writer’s Project interviews, extant memoirs and letters, noted tertiary sources by scholars such as Karen McCarthy Brown and Veve Clark, and personally conducted interviews since 1991 in the United States, Haiti, Africa, and New Orleans. Kelly E. Hayes’s chapter on women in Afro-Brazilian religions begins Part III. Approaching the topic of Afro-Brazilian religions from a female dominant religious perspective, this chapter examines the history, cosmology, structures, healing practices, and selected rituals of a practitioner of Afro-Brazilian religions. Hayes provides a multilayered look into these religions, including a brief overview of their historical development that took root wherever slaves had been brought from Africa to South America in the long history of the slave trade in Brazil. In addition, she details some of the differences between what today are the most widely diffused forms: Candomble´ and Umbanda. Hayes relates that at their broadest level, AfroBrazilian religions are healing traditions in which mind, body, and spirit are seen as intrinsically interrelated. The concept of mind, body, and spirit is expounded upon by Halifu Osumare in her chapter, ‘‘Sacred Dance-Drumming: Reciprocation and Contention within African Belief Systems in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area.’’ She describes how African people have always worshipped through the medium of the body. Historically, from the Old World to the New World, African peoples utilized their propensity to embody spirit and the divine principle, whether their colonizers and slave owners comprehended this cultural trait or not. As the famous dance anthropologist and choreographer Katherine Dunham has said, the use of dance and music to worship became, in a sense, a process of saving themselves in a near impossible situation: abusive slavery and severely restrictive social segregation. Osumare demonstrates that, although northern California is often left out of the national discourse on the practice of African belief systems, Oakland and San

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Francisco are flourishing with activity and attendant controversy in these spiritual practices. Her goal in this chapter is to illuminate the reciprocal relationship between African and Caribbean dance classes and the practice of African-based religions in the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area, as well as to analyze the conflicts implicit in the belief systems that underwent the forced migration of the Atlantic slave trade. Katherine Johanna Hagedorn contributes to Part IV. Her chapter, ‘‘To Have and to Hold: Possession Performance in Afro-Cuban Regla de Ocha,’’ considers women’s experiences of orisha possession in the Afro-Cuban religious tradition of Regla de Ocha (more commonly known as Santeria), using three case studies from her recent and ongoing fieldwork in Cuba and the United States. In Regla de Ocha, orisha possession occurs frequently, particularly in the context of a tambor, an Ocha drumming ceremony held in honor of one or more orishas. For a variety of reasons, women are more likely than men to experience orisha possession. Hagedorn sheds light on the subjectivity of women’s experiences in Ocha possession by juxtaposing these experiences with the tendency of other Ocha practitioners (usually male) to evaluate these possession experiences using the terms ‘‘fake’’ and ‘‘real.’’ She explores the question, why is the power of representing this ecstatic religious experience wrested from those who felt it, and given to those who judge it? Jualynne E. Dodson gives further contribution to our fourth theme with her chapter, ‘‘African Descendent Women and Religion: Diaspora in Oriente Cuba.’’ She discusses women’s participation in Palo Mayombe, an Africabased religious tradition actively practiced in Cuba. There also is exploration of Muertera Bembe de Sao and Cuban Vodu, which are equally Africa-based practices. The focal point of this chapter is women’s presence and participation in these ritual traditions as well as in Espiritismo, a religious practice that is distinct to Cuba and in which women are active, though it was not built on African origins. The chapter presents a brief discussion of the development of the religions in Oriente (the eastern region of Cuba), the roles women play, and analysis of how these roles interrelate to the full expression of each of the religious traditions in the region. The basis of her chapter is data gathered from her more than five years of field research in Oriente. Oyeronke Olademo’s chapter, ‘‘Religion and Women’s Sexuality in Africa: The Intersection of Power and Vulnerability,’’ provides another window into women’s experiences of sexuality, power, and vulnerability. In Africa, religion plays a prominent role in explaining and prescribing parameters for women’s sexuality. The regulations are usually rooted in the people’s cosmic perceptions, and these are manifested in diverse rituals and social principles within each society. Procreation is of high priority with the African, because it guarantees both personal and collective immortality through

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perpetuity. Whereas this privilege to bring forth children bestows ‘‘power’’ on women, it nonetheless makes them vulnerable to manipulation and domination in certain ways. Sexuality could thus be construed as having a doubleedged influence on women in Africa. Rituals are instituted and practiced to confirm women’s sexuality in Africa. This chapter analyzes the position of religion in bestowing power but also vulnerability on women as a consequence of their sexuality. The Yoruba of Nigeria serve as the focus. Part V begins with Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier’s chapter titled, ‘‘A Religion of the Interstices: Asian Pacific American Women and Multiple Religious Practices.’’ Tiemeier writes that Asian Pacific American (APA) women’s religious practices mirror their complex negotiations between their many, sometimes conflicting, traditions and worlds. Here, the comfortable boundaries of ‘‘religion’’ break down in the face of ‘‘culture,’’ as APA women bring together Christian, Confucian, Buddhist, Shinto, and even tribal indigenous practices in order to construct their own liberating realities. She brings together a religious and cultural discourse that has been developed out of Asian Pacific American women’s negotiations of their many worlds. This interconnection has resulted from the very real plurality of Christian Asian and Asian American religious expressions. Tiemeier focuses on how Christian Asian and Asian Pacific American women negotiate and interpret their religiously diverse contexts. Diana’s Grove is a community that has become home to many types of new and emerging spiritualities. The chapter of the same name, written by Susan E. Hill, John K. Simmons, and Cynthea Jones, describes a community founded in the mid-1990s by Cynthea Jones and Patricia Storm. Diana’s Grove is a 102-acre retreat center, located in Missouri at the foothills of the Ozarks. The purpose of the programs at Diana’s Grove is to provide a space for the expression of Earth-based spiritual beliefs and to offer instruction in leadership development, with the goal of creating an intentional community where spiritual practice engages and enacts the values of inclusion, healthy group process, and shared power. In working toward this goal, the leaders and participants at Diana’s Grove represent the qualities of what they see as an emergent, integrative spiritual movement that offers an alternative to traditional, hierarchical, dogmatic forms of religious expression. In this chapter, then, the authors explore the ways in which Diana’s Grove exemplifies an integrative spiritual movement that illustrates alternative ways in which women, in particular, express their world views and practices. In another chapter focusing on women, world view, and religious practice, Dawn L. Hutchinson writes, ‘‘The Good Wife: The Religious Experience of Women in Scientology.’’ As in many other religions, women’s religious beliefs and practices in Scientology do not correspond precisely with the sacred writings of the movement. Two foundational texts, L. Ron

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Hubbard’s Dianetics: The Original Thesis and Mary Sue Hubbard’s Marriage Hats, might give one the impression that women have limited circumstances in Scientology. However, while asserting negative images of mothers and reinforcing traditional gender roles in the household, Scientology offers women the same opportunities toward enlightenment as men. Women, along with men, also hold positions of power in Scientology’s religious institutions. This chapter describes the discrepancies between the writings of founder L. Ron Hubbard and the practices of women in Scientology. While some of these incongruities can be explained as a modernization of a movement begun in the 1950s, others are grounded in practices determined during the founding of this New Religion. This chapter negotiates these seeming contradictions in this new religious movement and discusses women’s religious practices and beliefs in the movement. Hutchinson has used primary documents of the faith, Scientology Web sites, chat pages, and the published writings of the women themselves, former and present members. She also refers to women in Scientology-sponsored publications, videos, and Web pages that explain women’s perspectives and practices. Kimberly Whitney offers another contribution in her chapter, ‘‘Senses of Place: Women Greening Communities.’’ This chapter, an ecofeminist theological and ethical reflection, explores interdisciplinary voices of women and allies who are ‘‘practicing place’’ as cultural and environmental meditations. Sustainable practices of place, springing from world views that conceptualize a common and shared good, can be understood as religious practice. Here religiosity is defined as Margaret Miles articulates: ‘‘that which is most profoundly and mutually relational.’’ Sustainability posits relational world views of community care within a context of environmental, social, cultural, economic, political, religious, artistic, and policy landscapes. Practicing place, or community building to create sustainability, is both a critical and sympathetic endeavor. Indeed, a growing multidisciplinary literature explores the themes of women, place, world view, and sustainability. This study turns to some of the women’s literary voices that fuel interfaith dialogues on the care of Earth and cultures, shaping the religious imagination and world views of place and sustainability discourse: Eudora Welty, bell hooks, and Alice Walker. As a theologian and ethicist working in the interstitial area of place, body, land, and culture, Whitney reflects on some of the ingredients of sustainability carved out by women, including the impact of place, displacement, and migration. Our concluding chapter is ‘‘African Women in Traditional Religions: Illustrations from Kenya,’’ written by Mary Nyangweso Wangila, who takes on the difficult task of writing about African women as a category, despite the danger of generalizing about their experiences. African women come from diverse cultural contexts with unique beliefs and social experiences.

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This is not to say that their experiences are not similar to some extent, but to acknowledge the fact that differences that are often left out in generalized discussions are fundamental to the social identities and cultural experiences of these women. Yet to speak about African women’s experience is to acknowledge the fact that their unique experiences can be interpreted in a way of comparison, within patterns of socio-cultural experience that are characteristic of African communities. To effectively speak about African women and traditional religion, one needs to examine the roles they play in these religions and highlight the social status accorded to the female. This task is challenging not only because of the historical influences Africa has encountered over a period of time, but also because it is difficult to distinguish religious experiences from secular experiences. Wangila comments that the renowned scholar of African religions, John S. Mbiti, described this Continental experience when he observed that Africans are ‘‘notoriously religious;’’ prominent African feminist theologian Mercy Amba Oduyoye later espoused this sentiment when she described African women as ‘‘religious chief client.’’ These two scholars alluded to the religious overtones of any African experience, a fact that must be acknowledged in an analysis of African women’s experiences. In this chapter, Wangila employs an analytical approach in her examination of how women treat and are treated by indigenous religions. She draws from Kenyan stories, in comparison with stories from some other African communities, to highlight how religion influences women’s social experiences and roles.

NOTES 1. Gordon J. Melton, ‘‘Perspective: Toward a Definition of ‘New Religion,’ ’’ Nova Religio 8, No.1 (July 2004): 73. 2. Melton, ‘‘Perspective,’’ 73. 3. Margarite Fernandez Olmos and Lizabeth Paravisini-Gebert, Creole Religions of the Caribbean: An Introduction from Vodou and Santera to Obeah and Espiritismo (Religion, Race, and Ethnicity) (New York: New York University Press, 2003). 4. J. O. Awolalu and P. Ade Dopamu, West African Traditional Religion (Ibadan: Onibonje Press, 1979). 5. John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969). 6. Oyeronke Olajubu, Women in Yoruba Religious Sphere (New York: Suny Press, 2003).

P ART I

Women, Family, and Environment

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‘‘That Girl Is Poison’’: White Supremacy, Anxiety, and the Conflation of Women and Food in the Nation of Islam Stephen C. Finley and Margarita L. Simon

That girl is poison . . . She’s dangerous . . .1

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n this chapter we seek to explore and expose women’s voices and subjectivity in the Nation of Islam (NOI) as they asserted their own agency and humanity, in response to negative meanings that were constructed in the NOI in relation to women’s bodies and food. We situate our discussion within the context of women, family, and the environment, with strong overtones of sexuality, power, and ritual, since, as this chapter will demonstrate, it is through the ritualization and the systematic ordering of food and its preparation that female gender and sexuality are constructed and restricted. In short, the primary goal of this chapter is to present women’s responses to a gendered division of labor and meaning that privileged men and to explore how food and women were seen as poisons. Texts written by Elijah Muhammad,2 How to Eat to Live (Books 1 and 2) and Message to the Blackman in America, and the chapter, ‘‘Pork or Women’’ in Doris Witt’s Black Hunger are vital in conducting a thorough investigation

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of the fusion between food and women. This fusion—manifested in the utilization of agricultural metaphors as constructors of a biased gendered system of authority and as signifiers that prescribe specific meanings unto the bodies of female members of the NOI, specifically, and black women, in general—maintains a place of importance within the foundational frameworks of the NOI. Using Mary Douglas’s notion of dirt as presented in Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo,3 we will offer an interpretation of this idea of poison—an idea that initiates a parallel between women and poison, as shown in the opening lyrical excerpt, portraying both entities as elements of pollution, contamination, and degradation. Last, several primary texts and articles, such as Sonsyrea Tate’s, Little X and ‘‘Mediating Discrimination: Resisting Oppression Among AfricanAmerican Muslim Women’’ by Michelle D. Byng will be used to illustrate the response of NOI women to a specific type of subjectivity operating within their organization’s doctrinal and belief systems. Founded as Allah’s Temple of Islam by Master Fard Muhammad (also known as W. D. Fard) in Detroit, Michigan in 1930, the NOI has its genealogical and thematic origins most immediately in the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA), the first sustained African American Muslim movement in the United States. More generally, however, the NOI is a complex and creative conglomeration of theologies, philosophies, and practices that were borrowed, not only from the MSTA, but also from Sunni Islam, Freemasonry, Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association, African American Christianity, the Watchtower Bible and Tract Society (i.e., Jehovah’s Witnesses), and Western esotericism. Yet, information about the NOI that is the most known, or rather misunderstood, in American culture is the idea that whites are devils. Some of the notable NOI members were Elijah Muhammad, Malcolm X, Muhammad Ali, jazz artist Joe Sample, Warith Deen Mohammed, and Louis Farrakhan.4 Most importantly, the identity, meaning, and control of black bodies have been central themes in the NOI throughout its history.

BLACK WOMEN’S BODIES AS POISONOUS SITES OF SEXUALIZED AND SINFUL IMAGERY AND DISCOURSE Black women’s bodies are the sites on which and in which contestation over identity and power occur in the Nation of Islam. In order to unmask the relationship that exists between women, food, and poison within the NOI, theoretical considerations of the body, especially that of the black woman, must be explored. Mary Douglas and Pierre Bourdieu offer insightful perspectives that assist in illuminating and analyzing the ways in which

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the body is a central site and symbol in ritual and wide-range constructs of socio-religious activity and corresponding cosmologies. The body for Bourdieu, as for Douglas, is a political body in the sense that it is produced by unspoken, undisputed, and ‘‘taken for granted’’ values that are imposed upon dominated classes—women in the case of the NOI— by those who rule. Such taken-for-granted suppositions become legitimated by the masses or the lower classes through figurative violence, which obscures power relations that would otherwise make its operation visible. That is to say, the lower classes (often racialized and gendered) in a society accept as a given the values, perception, and categories of thought imposed upon them by the hierarchical society or religious institutions and come to accept the social order as desirable, which allows for the perpetuation of the behaviors and ideologies that continue to produce the same social structures, for example, men dominating women. This is important here, because the focus of this chapter ultimately concerns the exploration and explanation of the voices of NOI women and critical observations, specifically about black women’s bodies in terms of their culturally constructed and socially received meanings, issues that served to fix black women’s bodies as subjugated, sexualized, and sinful. It is in part to these meanings that the NOI was responding with respect to their treatment of and regard for African American women. George Yancy captures the sense in which black women’s bodies are shaped and formed through discourses, ‘‘Functioning as a site of rhetorical wealth, the black female body is identified and constructed for her. She inhabits a social universe within which she is constantly named’’ by others or ‘‘signified.’’5 He continues, referring to Sarah Bartmann, the ‘‘Hottentot Venus,’’6 as paradigmatic for the ways in which discourse functions to construct black women’s bodies and to label them as outside the norm. Transported from South Africa to England and France in the early nineteenth century, Bartmaan’s body was treated as a spectacle. She was made to walk around in the nude, gazed upon as a sexual fantasy, and finally dismembered and put on display after her death in the name of ‘‘science.’’ For Yancy, the discourse that constitutes black female bodies socially is racialized and filled with ideology that renders them over-sexualized and animalistic, even as they are fantasies and apparitions which have no ground or meaningful substance of their own. That is, they are seen as existing by and for the purpose of fulfilling the white imagination and longing. Kelly Brown Douglas illuminates this thought in her exposition of slavery and sexuality in Sexuality and the Black Church: ‘‘Black women were sexually exploited [and] became the unwilling recipients of the most depraved passions of White husbands, fathers, and sons.’’7

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bell hooks agrees with Yancy and Douglas in the sense that black women’s bodies have been characterized, strongly but only in part, by the notions of animality and unbridled sexuality. hooks suggests that black female bodies are seen as ‘‘naturally’’ existing for the sexual pleasure and fantasies of white men. For her, the black body (male and female) is different from the mainstream, coded to be more alive due to its primitive and animal nature. 8 At the same time, black women, according to hooks, are forced to serve as icons for black sexuality in general, which is constructed as deviant. hooks refers to this conflation or merging of black female bodies with animality and sexuality as ‘‘the wild woman pornographic myth of black female sexuality created by men in a white supremacist patriarchy . . . .’’9 In effect, black women’s bodies are seen as more sexually liberated, sexually available, licentious, and primal. Unfortunately, this body becomes visible and ‘‘gains attention only when it is synonymous with accessibility, availability—in short, when it is sexually deviant.’’10 Kelly Brown Douglas notes a connection between stereotypes, images, and the resulting degradation of the body. For Douglas, sexuality was a multipurposed tool, designed to build complex stereotypes surrounding the sexuality of black men and women while rationalizing slavery. She suggests that the ‘‘Jezebel Image’’11 was a symbol that transformed the image of black women’s bodies. The Jezebel is presented as one who has an unquenchable appetite for sex. The Jezebel is conniving, lewd, and aggressive in all manners associated with sexual activities. According to white supremacist forces directing the institution of slavery, the black woman personified the Jezebel; therefore, every stereotypical characteristic associated with this image became instantly equated with black women. It is this equating of black women’s bodies with the image of Jezebel, which lends ideological support to an aggressive assault on the female body via rapes and public displays of nudity on auction blocks. These acts are seen as justified, according to Douglas, because the body of a black woman symbolizes the Jezebel, an oversexed and always-already-available-for-sex woman. Therefore, black women’s bodies have become ‘‘helplessly trapped in the mythology of being Jezebels [and] the more entrenched the Jezebel image [becomes] the easier it is to justify treating black women in inhumane ways.’’12 It is necessary to note, however, that the dominant perspective that constructs black female bodies as sexualized animals is not just a white male discourse. Accordingly, African American men participate in the functional perpetuation of the mythology as they seek to gain entrance into the white male patriarchal arenas of power and prestige that are characterized by a disdain for women and black female exclusion from power as a threat to male dominance. hooks states, ‘‘Again it must be emphasized that men who are phallocentric or most worried about castration and emasculation are

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those who have completely absorbed white supremacist patriarchal definitions of masculinity.’’13 She also suggests that ‘‘Black male phallocentrism constructs a portrait of women as immoral simultaneously suggesting that she is irrational and incapable of reason.’’14 Kelly Brown Douglas also illustrates the participation of African American men in the propagation of this Jezebel image, but instead of focusing on the secular arena, she reveals this notion in African American religion, specifically the Black Church. Operating within this realm, she makes a direct connection between the stereotypical image assigned to black women and how this parallelism becomes a manifested reality within some black churches, stating: There are still Black churches that require women to cover their legs with a blanket when sitting in a pew so they will not distract men. This excuse that Black women are too sexually distracting is also commonly used to keep these women out of the pulpit and ordained ministry.15

Once again, similar to her exposition of the Jezebel image in slavery, she shows how this perception of black women’s bodies not only affects the ways in which black men within the church view black women, but also how this distorted view is utilized in the appropriation of gender roles within the religious culture. Mary Douglas and Bourdieu offer important insights into these phenomena because they help to explain the mechanics that are involved in the way bodies are discussed and defined. The most useful theoretical observation that they offer is the interconnectedness of bodies (e.g., of black women), social systems (e.g., the NOI), and cosmologies (e.g., agricultural metaphors).In order to understand any of the three, this three-part liaison has to be seen as a unit. In religious societies like the NOI, then, black women’s bodies will be treated in such a manner as to communicate that women are the passive recipients of black male desire and destiny. That is, she is a vessel for black male reproduction of his genes and the reproduction of the religious culture. As a result, ritual treatment of women reflects religious world views (i.e., cosmologies) and any prejudices and stereotypes that reflect male anxieties about their potential to reproduce the culture (i.e., the Black Nation) through them. It is this socially constructed stereotypical image of black women’s bodies, uncovered by Yancy, hooks, and Douglas, which allows us to establish a connection between beliefs and writings of the NOI and black women. When we examine the primary texts by Muhammad and Witt, we find the presence of agricultural metaphors, which for Muhammad serve as cosmological signposts that point to a divinely ordered relationship between black men and

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women. These texts also reveal the intimate proximity between food, white supremacy, women, and the concurrent concern about homosexuality. A metaphor signals an act of transference in which one form is used to designate another form, usually attempting to highlight resemblances between the two. In Message to the Blackman in America, Elijah Muhammad utilizes agricultural metaphors to establish cosmological, divinely ordered, gendered, and sexual identities within the NOI. He states, ‘‘The woman is the man’s field to produce his nation.’’16 Muhammad employs this metaphor to present a system of gender that allocates difference based on physiological difference. The metaphor presents gender identity as a strict binary model and strategically attaches certain characteristics to each category. For example, since the male examines, oversees, and protects the crops from pestilence, he is equated with activity, but the field, which Muhammad metaphorically designates as the woman, serves as a vessel of reception. Therefore, she symbolizes immobility, passivity, and utility. A binary system of gender, as presented in Muhammad’s allegory, may lead to the development of a hierarchical social system whose foundation is seen as biologically determined. The metaphor explicitly presents the man as the possessor of the field, that is, the ‘‘man’s field,’’ and the yielding crops, ‘‘his nation.’’17 It is the productive field that symbolizes ‘‘male fertility, privilege, and priority.’’18 The man, according to Muhammad, possesses all of the inherent qualities needed to produce a healthy nation with the exception of place of incubation, a field. In this sense, a woman’s identity and role is implicitly equated to reproduction and vassal status. Her value is measured by reproductive abilities; she must be a productive field. In this hierarchical arrangement of feminine reduction, the crop, that is, the reproduction of the social system, the building of the nation, becomes more valuable than the woman. Witt acknowledges this treatment of female bodies, especially in the state of pregnancy. She criticizes Muhammad’s ‘‘treat[ment] of the bodies of pregnant women as having value only in subordination (as a ‘maternal environment’) to the zygote, embryo, or fetus they carry.’’19 The woman’s ability to serve as a ‘‘maternal environment’’ serves also as a catalyst in producing value. In this sense, it seems that worth and esteem are readily ascribed to the woman’s ability to reproduce. However, because these agricultural metaphors place such great emphasis on the biological crop and the social crop, which is the NOI, that develops within this field or ‘‘maternal environment,’’ the value of fertility does not succeed in surpassing the worth of crops or offspring in the ideologies of the NOI. To that end, black women’s bodies are treated in such a way as to communicate that women’s bodies are the passive recipient of black male desire and destiny. They are, in fact, ‘‘fields’’ that every man needs in order to contribute to the building of the Black Nation.

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White supremacy, on the other hand, represents a system of ideas and practices that places the white ‘‘race’’ in a superior position with respect to the rest of humanity. As such, for Muhammad, these attitudes and practices yield a hegemonic or authoritative force, which places white people in a dominating position over black people. As one response to this posture of disempowerment, Muhammad strives to reshape and remake the integrity of the black body through the construction of a dietary model. The dietary prescription outlined within How to Eat to Live, (Books 1 and 2) functions as a counteractive weapon against negative stereotypes, which are propagated and ascribed within the structural framework of white supremacy. Within this discourse, Muhammad asserts that certain foods, ‘‘slave foods,’’ embody these negative images that are directly projected onto the black body. More directly, he uses the pig to show this embodied projection. Muhammad, correlating the characteristics of a pig with consumers of its flesh states: They [swine] fill the eater with drowsiness, laziness—slow thinking, slow moving and the tendency to be easily irritated. The swine eaters are always ready to rise up for a dispute and fight other people and among themselves. He [the pig] is the dumbest animal. In case of bad weather, arising, he is never intelligent enough to go in before it actually starts raining or hailing on his back.20

The consumption of this flesh inherently yields a manifestation of these negative qualities. According to Muhammad, these foods were strategically injected into the black community by white slave masters to reinforce stereotypes used in the justification of slavery. Therefore, certain foods serve as a lifeline for the continual propagation of these negative images, and the pig is the most insidious of them. Muhammad urges that the removal of these foods from African American diets, pork in particular, would sever the ties that bind negative stereotypical images to black bodies. He suggests that the consumption of this food is also evident among white people, albeit he condemns black people for mimicking the eating habits of the ‘‘slave master,’’ and he labels an African American who emulate whites’ diet as a poor, blind, deaf, and dumb Negro who ‘‘eats and drinks anything he sees his white master eat[ing] and drink[ing].’’21 According to Muhammad, black people, unlike the white race, have no choice in following the laws given by Allah, such as refraining from the touching and consumption of swine. However, due to their desire to emulate the white race’s eating habits, black people will follow this dietary pathway to destruction. Beyond imitation, through the utilization of these dietary codes, Muhammad also illustrates how the hegemonic structures of white supremacy continue to restrict the freedom of black people. He maintains:

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After telling the slaves they were free, America [white dominating forces] kept them here in order to prey upon them. Now today, many of the slaves wish to be free of America, but her reply by her actions to our wanting to be free is ‘‘no.’’ And America continues to give the so-called Negroes the same bad food and drink that her (America’s) fathers did in the days of servitude slavery.22

He contends that it is a combination of this continual production, easy availability, and accessibility of ‘‘bad food’’ and the receptivity of it by members within black communities that continue to create strongholds that restrict freedom. Devised and operated through the industrial channels of white America, the availability of these foods symbolizes a test utilized in measuring the vulnerabilities of black people.23 This ‘‘bad food’’ is synonymous with the notion of slave food, more specifically, physical consumption of these particular types of food correlates to the psychological internalization of the negative attributes associated with it. Therefore, Muhammad urges his people to refrain from these slave foods in order to preserve their dignity and freedom. A dynamic relationship exists between food and women. Women in America have historically been aligned with the preparation and serving of food. Therefore, women symbolize the guardian of nutritional consumption. As custodians of the kitchen, women not only use food as a source and substance of nourishment, but they also utilize its materiality as a channel in the perpetuation of self and communal power. For the ‘‘control of alimentation (food) is a source of power because food is a very special substance.’’24 Due to its necessity, food represents a tool in which women gain a sense of selfempowerment from their ability to control the dietary intake of others, both within the family and the larger community. It is this alliance of power, expressed in the rituals between food and women, that Muhammad seeks to sever and subvert. He uses food, the very object of ‘‘traditional’’ feminine control, and women’s roles as guardians over consumption as a means to undermine and redefine the connectivity between the two. In both volumes of How to Eat to Live, he establishes a connection between food, specifically pork, women, and disorder. Muhammad elucidates what he sees as an explicit relationship between pork and disorder. For him, the ingestion of pork instigates the process of chaos within the community via individual consumption. Although pork seems to be the obvious site of contamination, the woman becomes inherently associated with the initial ingestion of this poisonous substance. Accordingly, women, especially mothers, are implicitly inserted into this relationship between pork (food) and disorder. In a section titled ‘‘Feeding Babies,’’ Muhammad states:

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We must not get the idea that we can nurse the baby with everything we eat. This is what will start sickness and disease in the family. Some mothers are very careless. The baby can ask for what the mother is eating, and even if it is a beefsteak [or any other type of food], she will cut him a piece. We create sickness right in our homes, from the cradle to the grave.25

Although the opening of this portal of contamination seems to be one of plurality, mothers are explicitly pronounced and singled out. Incorporation of sustenance is equated with the mother and she serves as an overlord of the types of foods that are consumed within the environment of the home. If pork or any type of restricted food is allowed to permeate the boundaries of the home, then the woman becomes the family member who is responsible for forming the fall into disorder. The integrity of the mother’s guardianship is questioned. It is depicted as weak. This dietary exposition presented by Muhammad attempts to devalue the woman’s ability to control nutrition; hence, certain foods and disorder deem the woman out of order and out of place. Not only is domestic disarray attributed to women, specifically mothers, but social disorder also becomes directly linked to them. Disorder in Muhammad’s cosmology extends into the social fiber of the black community through the mother’s choice of foods that she gives to her children. He suggests that there is a direct connection between the food consumption of a baby and the development of self-control. He declares: The baby eats poisonous animals [pork], fowls and vegetables and drinks milk that is not his milk [breast milk]—it belongs to the cow’s baby. Here the child is reared on animals’ and cattle food. This is why we have such a great percentage of delinquency among minors.26

Repeatedly, declares Muhammad, the mother allows poisonous foods like pork to enter the digestive system of her child. This consumption becomes equated with the individual self-control and it is this lack of control that is diffused into the community as the child grows. The boundaries surrounding the home become porous, due to the inability of women to control juvenile eating. This, in turn, allows all types of ‘‘filth’’ to flow reciprocally outward into the community and back into the home. As a result, Muhammad explains, ‘‘When the baby reaches the age of 10, and if it is a male, most of them begin to indulge in drinking alcoholic beverages and using tobacco in one form or another.’’27 Pork is poisonous, but according to Muhammad, the mother allows it to infest the home and the community, yielding to disorder in both realms. Therefore, as Witt also highlights, ‘‘the responsibility for black social problems rests with the failures of African American mothers.’’28

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Using food as entryways of disorder to undermine the power position of women, Muhammad apparently seeks to destabilize the power that exists between food and women. He utilizes control of consumption in order to achieve this task, which he maintains, comes from God (another male). Regarding food consumption, he prescribes certain dietary mandates specifically for women. For example, both volumes of How to Eat to Live contain breastfeeding guidelines. Women are instructed to drink the milk of a cow, eat bread that is not cooked on the same day, and to refrain from fasting in times of pregnancy and breastfeeding. Once again, the value of the offspring is preserved and, more importantly, Muhammad gains a sense of power by controlling the physical body of the woman via dietary codes. Also, this notion of control by way of consumption extends beyond dietary control and enters into the reproductive arena of women. Muhammad seeks to control the reproductive aspects of women by integrating a section on birth control within the dietary codes presented in Book 1 of How to Eat to Live. In this discourse, he maintains: It is a disgrace upon us black people of America to permit ourselves and our future generations to be cut off and destroyed by ignorant, foolish, pleasure-seeking girls and women of our own, who do not know what they are doing when they swallow the birth control pill.29

Since birth control interferes with the reproductive abilities of a woman, Muhammad categorizes the pill, like pork, as poisonous. Some women ingest this poison and inhibit reproduction or the birth of the Black Nation.’’30 Therefore, through ingestion of poison, in the form of birth control, the woman, in Muhammad’s view, is poisonous and dangerous. Agricultural metaphors, as presented earlier, are used to develop a relationship between food production and the construction of a binary system of gender whose classification is based on biological or anatomical differences. The two categorical dimensions of this system serve as a foundation in which differences become equated with vertical locality. With this, male qualities are placed above those of the female. Furthermore, this notion of inequality leads to the promotion of ‘‘hegemonic masculinity.’’31 Promoting traditional ideas of masculinity, such as sexual potency, self/communal control, physical/mental strength, and heterosexuality, hegemonic masculinity dominates women and other males who do not exhibit these male attributes. The apprehension of control over these lesser bodies becomes a primary objective of this type of domination.

DIETARY REGULATIONS, WHITE SUPREMACY, AND ANXIETY In devising food rituals that participated in designating the ‘‘place’’ of women as religious and divinely ordered, Muhammad was responding to an

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anxiety, an unsettling nervousness and insecurity, about being dominated by a patriarchal social system that was controlled by white men, a system of privilege and violence that did not include black men in its patriarchy. Muhammad was born into this violent society in Georgia in 1897. According to Karl Evanzz, this time period was the worst period of lynching for African Americans. For instance, one-third of all lynchings that occurred after 1882 were carried out between 1890 and 1900.32 During the year of Muhammad’s birth, 123 African Americans were lynched.33 Throughout his life, he would witness lynching, physical evidence of lynching, and loss of loved ones due to lynching.34 In addition to physical violence, Muhammad was responding to the symbolic violence of white supremacy in which black bodies were saturated with negative meanings through racist discourses and were compelled to accept such ideation as truth.35 Certain objects, such as food, served as symbols that perpetuated social stigmas with respect to black bodies. More specifically, foods such as cornbread, collard greens, black-eyed peas, and chitlins served as agents in propagating negative stereotypes concerning black people. The utilization of ‘‘slave food,’’ such as watermelon, in the spreading of racist ideologies may help to explain why Muhammad was so concerned with the social meanings of foods that were associated with slavery and violence that he attempted to limit the NOI diet via strict dietary regulations. We find Muhammad’s consciousness of the relationship between food and political realities in one source: ‘‘Muhammad was clearly insisting on the political nature of gastronomic desire, on the connection between so-called private practices of the body and social forces such as white supremacy.’’36 On the other hand, it is clear that the dietary program was not all positive, especially with regard to black women, who appear to have been its primary object of negation in an attempt to institute a divine order that recognized black men as eminent. Witt explains: My main line of argument will be that Muhammad used food as part of his effort to formulate a model of black male selfhood in which ‘‘filth’’ was displaced onto not white but black femininity and thus articulated within African American culture via discourses of gender and sexuality rather than class.37

As a result, dietary codes functioned to establish the hierarchical social order in which African American men, themselves dominated in American culture, could establish themselves as rulers over marginalized groups. After all, contrary to Witt’s contention that the discourses were primarily related to gender and sexuality rather than class,38 Muhammad effectively recreated an internal class system within the NOI in which women and others were second class.

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Because emasculation was the greatest fear, African American women were the ultimate symbol of danger. It is not difficult to translate men’s concern over their own masculinity into control of women. Women embodied all that would threaten the continued existence and psychological well being of African American men, especially given that black men, the Black Nation, could only be reproduced through her. She was the ‘‘field,’’ the passive recipient of the man’s ‘‘seed’’ who is worked on and entered. Numerous instances in the literature of the NOI demonstrate this desire for control of women’s bodies and link it to the maintenance of black manhood. Muhammad, in what seems exaggerative, makes the connection between the two: Stop allowing the white man to shake hands or speak to your women anytime or anywhere. This practice has ruined us. They wink their eye at your daughter after coming into your home—but you cannot go on the North side and do the same with his women.39

Rather than framing the issue of interracial relationships as a choice that a black woman can make, he maintains that it is more than an emotional affront to black men. Through miscegenation, white men violate black men’s ‘‘nature’’ as men: No black man feels good—by nature—seeing a white man with a Negro woman. We have all colors in our race—red, yellow, brown and jet black— why should we need a white person? Africans would not be the targets that we allow ours to be.40

The goal of Muhammad’s food regulations, then, may have been to purify African American men and the Black Nation, understood in masculine terms, from the poison and contamination of black women and femininity, read as homosexuality, an ultimate threat and danger to the production of the black nation.41 Two important factors are in tension here. First, it seems fairly obvious that Muhammad to a large extent had coopted particular values of the culture of white supremacy, in that he associated true manhood with patriarchal domination of women (and the subjugation of gay men). Since African American men were denied full participation in the privileges of white American sexist culture, many black men and the NOI, in particular, projected their anxiety and insecurity over the absence of this marker of true manhood onto black women.42 For bell hooks, this internalization of white patriarchal culture or ‘‘phallocentrism’’ can clearly be seen in Black Nationalist and black uplift movements such as the NOI.43 Furthermore, hooks maintains that attacking black women

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may give black men a sense of power and agency that attacking white supremacy may not, given the inability of black men to control the forces of white supremacy.44 Therefore, it becomes important to control women and to dominate them or else their own sense of agency and freedom can be seen by some as a threat to black masculinity. hooks reiterates the point, asserting, ‘‘Again it must be emphasized that the men who are most worried about castration and emasculation are those who have completely absorbed white supremacist patriarchal definitions of masculinity.’’45 Notwithstanding, the cooptation of the patriarchy of white supremacy stands as a major conflict for the NOI, and its identity continues to be dependent upon white people and discourses, even as its polar opposite. Second, the existence of women ‘‘as women’’ seemed to create some additional anxiety for the NOI. In other words, the problems that Muhammad was attempting to ameliorate through the dietary rituals were problems of masculinity that were framed as issues of femininity. What we are suggesting is that particular structures and theological perspectives may have exacerbated the NOI’s anxiety about its masculine identity vis-a`-vis white domination. One example is obvious. Though not the only explanation, the very presence of women raises the question of masculine authenticity in the face of a male god. That is to say, while a male god, in this case according to NOI doctrine, God-in-person Master Fard Muhammad, may have offered a superficial source of black male pride and theological justification for the subjugation of women,46 and it may even offer a reply to the problem of black suffering given that God (ambiguously ‘‘black’’) is physically and literally on your side in the fight against white supremacy, having a male deity (especially one who has flesh) still raises deeper, unconscious homoerotic issues. For instance, how would a man worship, love, serve, and submit to another man even if this man was God? In this case, homoerotic desire is more than a symbolic same-sex relationship between men in the NOI and their god-man, since this deity walked and lived among them and continues to exist bodily according to the apocalyptic ideas of the NOI. Such homoerotic longing for union with and submission and devotion to a male god who also had arms, legs, feet, and a penis, and indeed an exclusively male hierarchy may help to explain the hypermasculinity that was evident in the NOI, that is, hyperbolic masculinity as a veil for homoerotic impulses and desire. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz shares insights that may help to clarify this contention, asserting, ‘‘A masculine god, I suggest, is a kind of male beauty image, an image of male perfection against which men measure themselves and in terms of which they fall short.’’47 As such, this masculine god, as a symbol of perfection, may contribute to the phallic anxiety that many religious men experience as it merges with the insecurities resulting from white domination. Again, the NOI interpreted domination and submission as feminine.

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Further complicating the issue, because NOI cosmology recognizes strict natural distinctions between men and women and a rigid heterosexual norm, this posture forces men into a position that puts their maleness (if only understood as heterosexual and masculine) at risk: ‘‘When a cultural system treats male-female relationships as the norm and ideal, then the object of male desire should be a woman. If the object is another male [as in a male God],48 there is pressure to feminize one of the males involved.’’49 Perchance it might be blasphemous to feminize the divine in such a system in which masculinity is seen as ultimate, leaving NOI men with a serious internal psychological conflict about the meaning of their own manhood. Speaking of the Apostle Paul and his theology, Stephen D. Moore raises a similar question: We might begin by asking what logic dictates that a submissive male be characterized as ‘‘feminine’’ or ‘‘feminized’’ in the first place. To so characterize the submissive male is to code the erotic exchange in terms that are ineluctably ‘‘hetero.’’ It is to supply the ‘‘missing’’ female in the exchange by dressing one of the partners in conceptual drag and declaring him to be the woman.50

In the end, they must bear the burden of imagining themselves in the feminine in order to be in relationship with God. Returning to the problematic issue of women ‘‘as women,’’ one may note that the very presence of women in the NOI signified a predicament for which Muhammad seemed to have no good answer. Namely, if heterosexuality is fixed as the divine norm, and God is a man, then in relation to God and as a submissive partner to God, women as such hold an implicitly superior position, in fact, a ‘‘natural’’ position that conflicts with the stated cosmology and all the theologies, metaphors, and rituals that would support and engender it. We point to this phenomenon, call it ‘‘vagina envy,’’ as a symbolic reversal of Freudian ‘‘penis envy’’ that is a primary locus for religious misogyny within the NOI. In other words, it may have been that the religious discourse and ritual practices that would appear to establish the woman as inferior to men may have in reality represented the anxieties of men over her position of power to reproduce the Black Nation and to be in ‘‘natural’’ relationship to a male god in this fixed heterosexual cosmos. This fact, more than anything, may help to explain the nature of the dietary codes, why women are the negative object of them, and it would begin to point to the reasons why they are seen as poisonous and dangerous to the Black Nation and to black men, despite language which ostensibly valorizes them. Given this notion of black women’s unconsciously-perceived superior position with respect to a male god, among other things, and driven by the cooptation and internalization of the white patriarchal domination of women

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as a master marker of manhood, the black man in the NOI is driven either to face his anxiety over the illusion of his ‘‘masculinity’’ and his dominant position with respect to women or to perform power moves to dislodge black women in the NOI from positions that signify their superior status or provide places in which they can exercise agency, subjectivity, and subversion. Muhammad and the NOI had apparently chosen the latter, and this move was made in and through ritual practices. Inherent in ritualization is power—power that is maintained and exerted by the ones who control the ritual and who imbue it with meaning. In fact, ‘‘ritualization is a strategy for the construction of a limited and limiting power relationship.’’51 Ritualization, however, obscures power objectives in that it is cloaked in religious language that legitimates it as an absolute and immutable form of knowledge. What we find in the dietary laws, then, is an elaborate ‘‘exorcise’’ (pun intended) in power relations through ritualization that are meant to eject [evil] women symbolically if not actually from these power places and shift the power to that which is supremely divine—men. This, we contend, may be sufficient to explain the inclusion of statements in How to Eat to Liveand Message to the Blackman in Americathat boldly instruct a woman what she can and cannot put into her own body (e.g., certain foods, birth control, etc.), so that even spaces that were once considered the domain of women, such as the kitchen and child birth, came under male control. For as Muhammad proclaims, though he instituted and regulated these practices, the authority for them was transmitted from man to man, from God himself.52 Witt recognizes that ‘‘Muhammad was facing a problem common to all patriarchal religions: how to eclipse the role of women in procreation so as to locate the origins of life in a male god.’’53 Furthermore: His anxiety about female contamination of black manhood might explain why Muhammad expressed a desire not just to control the reproductive practices of African American women (and hence guarantee paternity), but also to dictate what black women put in their own bodies.54

When all was said and done, no obvious spaces or places existed for women, not even with regard to hygiene and menstruations, which were not seemingly under the authority and control of men.

THE RESPONSE(S) OF NOI WOMEN: ASSERTING INDIVIDUAL AND COMMUNAL AGENCY Strict dietary prescriptions, uniformity of dress, and an intracommunal system of economic circulation represent forces generated within the Nation

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of Islam to repel the negative social, political, and economic forces of white supremacy that operated against the black community. The NOI, in an attempt to counteract these negative forces through the use of discipline and order, places certain members within its group in a position of inferiority, effectively in lower classes. Women within the NOI are assigned marginalized roles and are presented as passive, valuable only with respect to their reproduction capabilities, portals of disorder, and according to Witt, symbols of filth. These assignments strategically place women of the NOI in particular locations, especially while under the leadership of Master Fard Muhammad and Elijah Muhammad. Sonsyrea Tate, in Little X, reveals this positioned perspective from an insider’s viewpoint. Growing up in the Nation of Islam, she shares, ‘‘We [women] all had our places—little girls, mothers, and even grandmothers.’’55 She continues, ‘‘While liberated women [feminists] bought fire trucks for their daughters, we girls in the Nation learned to remain domestic.’’56 Tate exposes the locality set for women—the domestic sphere represents a woman’s place within the structural framework of the NOI. Therefore, all aspects of the woman, her physical labor, social activities, and even economic pursuits are located within the boundaries of the home. Although these women were placed in a domesticated posture, they still considered the NOI a ‘‘safe social space.’’57 Harsh realities of segregation, physical torture, and the continual propagation of racist ideologies permeated the atmospheric domain of the black community. Likewise, black women became open targets to the triple threat of racism, sexism, and classism. As we showed earlier, the black female body became a socially constructed muse of white patriarchal fantasy, negating the black woman’s artistic contribution towards her own bodily image. Subsequent to these realities, the NOI for some black women represented a protective space, indeed a liminal space, in which they were able to obtain some sense of power through ‘‘self-definition, determination, and valuation.’’58 With this mantle of empowerment, some women within the NOI, despite the sexist tendencies found in its theological framework, sought to create openings that served to promote both individual and communal agency. Specified locality moved women within the NOI into marginalized positions, but some of them used these inferior placements, such as restriction to the domestic sphere, as a medium to assert their individual agency within this ‘‘secure social space.’’ Women placed their hands upon this marginalized space and created a liminal place in which they could speak privately and subversively. Framed as religious, many NOI women considered ‘‘domestic’’ work within their homes to be sacred work, rather than mundane and routine activities.59 Such perspectives, for some, gave women a sense of importance despite the fact that their gender was considered unequal. Then

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too, during the 1960s in the NOI of Newark, New Jersey, some female members utilized domestic space as a catalyst in launching businesses. Cynthia S’thembile West illustrates the fruition of such businesses in her interviews of 16 women who were active in the Newark branch of the NOI in the 1960s.60 Three of the women combined their strengths of cooking, organization, and nutritional knowledge to form a vast catering system from within their homes. Not only did these women use a seemingly marginalized location to exercise individual agency, they also became active contributors to the economic empowerment of each individual home and the surrounding community. Out of their own agency and creativity, these women sculpted economic ventures using the raw materials of marginalization. Domestic restrictions, parallelisms with disorder through food, and overarching patriarchal constructs within the NOI, for some of its female members, represented personal sacrifices they were willing to make for the propagation of a healthy black community. Although some women recognized and acknowledged sexism within the NOI, they focused on the external discriminatory actions that were hurled toward the black community. Therefore, protecting the community from these racist ideologies and attacks sometimes called them to sacrifice their own individual desires for the sake of communal empowerment. Paradoxically, even this apparent sacrifice was an exercise in subjectivity and agency, given that it was their own choice to devote their energies to decentering white supremacy. This type of personal sacrifice for the sake of the community manifests itself in many women within the NOI. For example, Clara Evans Muhammad, the wife of Elijah Muhammad, immersed herself into social activism through education. She sacrificed personal agency, time, and space to start the University of Islam because for her ‘‘education is a key to the liberation of black people.’’61 From its conception in 1932 through the late 1960s, the University of Islam ‘‘almost single handedly provided African American children with a worldview that promoted self-knowledge, self-reliance, and self-discipline.’’62 Sister Clara’s individual sense of agency takes the form of latent energy—hidden agency subtly craving productive spaces as it flows through the patriarchal and marginalized medium of the NOI. The community actively apprehends power within this created space of education. Her agency becomes intertwined with communal progression. But it would be a mistake to suggest that women in the NOI during the time of Muhammad totally repressed their desire for gender equality in the NOI in lieu of the ‘‘greater’’ freedom from white oppression. Furthermore, it is little known that Sister Clara maintained the coherence of the NOI from 1942–1946, when Muhammad was imprisoned for draft evasion, basically functioning as its executive who gave orders to the male ministers.

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It is essential to illustrate the means in which some women transformed a seemingly restrictive space into one of productivity. However, it is equally important to present women who did not agree with the marginalized localities that they were placed in by the NOI. For instance, some women used the Muslim Girl’s Training (MGT) and General Civilization Class (GCC) as a platform to not only form a community of sisterhood, but also as an outlet in which the sisters could discuss their frustrations concerning certain mandates within the NOI that both directly and indirectly affected them. They expressed their concerns about having multiple children in association with low economics, treatment of their bodies by their husbands, and the notion that supporting the man should supercede their personal welfare. While these women practiced verbal protest, others demonstrated their objections via personal action. One interviewee in West’s study of the Newark branch of the NOI states: I didn’t like it; oh, no, I didn’t like that because I knew I wanted to be a teacher. And that created some problems for me because my husband did not understand when I’m gonna leave the university [of Islam] as a teacher, and move on to the public school as a teacher. Now that was too hard for most men to swallow. They didn’t want the wives in [the] public sector. They wanted them strictly involved with Islam. And that was one of the negative things that, I think, came across.63

Not only did this woman voice her concern with limitations, which were placed on female members, but she also asserted her protest by becoming a teacher within the Newark public school system. The history of the NOI is replete with examples of women resisting black male hegemony and control. Edward Curtis IV suggests that members of the NOI, contrary to popular conceptions, basically did what they wanted to do, despite the fact that the rituals and theology that came from Muhammad were considered divinely decreed,64 which meant that some women resisted in various ways rigid control by men.65 Evanzz notes the same and offers illustrations of women who openly challenged the authority of NOI ministers, even when the issue at hand did not specifically pertain to gender. He mentions, for example, an ongoing conflict between Louis Farrakhan, Minister of Boston’s Temple #11 in 1959, and Ella Little, Malcolm X’s sister: Angered over Ella’s rising authority in the temple, Farrakhan called the Messenger [Elijah Muhammad] to complain that Ella was undermining him and was out to be disciplined. She was acting as though she was the minister he said. When Ella discovered what Farrakhan had done, she

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confronted him, calling him a ‘‘mamma’s boy’’ who had let a little power go to his head. The charge stung Farrakhan, an outwardly bold man who never knew his father . . . .66

Examples of women challenging the intellectual and theological foundations of the NOI exist as well. Again, Ella Little openly expressed that she never believed that Master Fard Muhammad was God-in-person, despite Muhammad’s insistence.67

‘‘THAT GIRL IS POISON’’: TAXONOMY AND TRANSGRESSION Finally, while women’s bodies and slave foods were conflated in their meanings as poisonous to men in the NOI (and, perhaps through the NOI’s influence, poisonous to African American culture at large), we want to offer some concluding remarks, utilizing Mary Douglas’s theory of ‘‘dirt’’ in her classic text Purity and Danger, to bring some overarching coherence to what we have argued. Douglas’s grand theory seeks to explain the pervasive concern for purity and cleanliness in both modern and premodern cultures. Dirt, here, is understood not in materialistic terms but rather in symbolic terms. She argues that all cultures and societies develop taxonomies, which are classificatory systems used to render the world intelligible, coherent, and logical. These often elaborate taxonomies order societies by putting things in their place, genus, or class, making them functional systems that are again, intelligible. Anything that transgresses such classification is seen as a threat to the social order and, as a result, ‘‘dangerous.’’ Consequently, for Douglas, dirt is ‘‘matter out of place.’’68 But being out of place can also mean that something is ambiguous, anomalous, or difficult to classify, which presents a threat to the legitimacy and coherence of the society and cosmology reflected in and on physical bodies.69 Such may be the case of black women in the NOI. Under the leadership of Muhammad, the NOI had ordered their world in a system that privileged men. As we have argued, some of this hierarchical modality of gendered relations may have been internalized from the values of white patriarchal supremacy. This culture of white domination in America fractured the black male self, injuring it, making it difficult for men in the NOI to see themselves as authentically masculine. These anxieties about black manhood were projected onto black women in the NOI, who were then seen as poisonous to and dangerous to ‘‘true’’ black manhood because they were difficult to classify in NOI ideology, precisely because they may have unconsciously occupied a symbolically and religiously superior position in the unconscious workings of black men who understood the god they served, worshiped, and submitted to, as a literal man.

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The NOI’s insistence on a strict divinely decreed heterosexual norm placed men symbolically in an inferior position with respect to this male god. Who else would be the natural complement and partner to a male god in a heterosexually privileged culture but a religious woman? Black women, therefore, transgressed the social and ‘‘natural’’ classification that rendered them inferior and subject to men. In the words of the Bel Biv Devoe song at the beginning of this chapter, ‘‘That girl is poison . . . She’s dangerous,’’ because she makes the ideological and undisputed precepts of NOI mythology and theology regarding women absurd and unintelligible. Her status makes her dangerous to male domination as divinely ordered, and the hypermasculine practices as well as the control of women through rituals such as the dietary codes can be read as compensation responses. Finally, Douglas’s theory of dirt may also help to explain the theoretical conflation of women, pig/pork, and to a lesser extent gays, given that they can all be seen as difficult to render in any fixed category of cosmology. That is to say, the reason why Muhammad seemed to speak of them all in the context of ‘‘poison’’ and ‘‘filth’’ and in the same conversations may be that none of them fit neatly into any social or religious category of existence. Women, who were supposed to be inferior to men and led by them, challenged men, asserted their own agency, and questioned the authority and ideology of men. As well, by virtue of being women in a ‘‘heterosexual’’ social system, they, rather than men, despite theology to the contrary, may have held superior symbolic status. Furthermore, the pig was a grafted animal that was impossible to categorize since it was ‘‘made of cat, rat and dog.’’70 Likewise, gay persons transgressed the rigid NOI divine order, which was strictly hetero-‘‘normal.’’ For these reasons, they were all dangerous and transgressive to the system, especially women who thus received the greatest amount of restriction and control.

NOTES We would like to dedicate this chapter to the black women who have meant so much to our lives. For Stephen: Hattie M. Fuette, Sonja Finley-Adams, Rachel Vincent-Finley, PhD, Ella V. Lane, Tanya Ratcliff, Glynis Tidwell, Dejuana Butler, Thosha Hart, Aunts Liz Lacy, Frances Anderson, and Cora Nobles, the late Flora Mae Ball, and Najya. For Margarita: Ola Simon, Camilla Simon, Aunt Annie McCall, Aunt Lois Edwards, Aunt Joyce Rabb, Felicia Manassa, Regina Emma McAboy, and Lee Campbell. 1. Bel Biv Devoe, ‘‘Poison,’’ on Poison, MCA Special Products, 1990. This song demonstrates the conflation of black women’s bodies and the notion of poison in black popular culture. The song is also important as an example of misogynistic discourse such as that found in religion and in the NOI.

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2. This chapter is concerned with the NOI under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad, from 1933–1975. 3. Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo (London and New York: Routledge, 2002). 4. Michael Jackson professed to have converted to the NOI in 1994. 5. George Yancy, ‘‘Whiteness and the Return of the Black Body.’’ PhD diss., Duquesne University, 2005, 143. The emphasis added is ours. 6. See bell hooks, Black Looks: Race and Representation (Boston: South End Press, 1992), 62. See also Janell Hobson, Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture (New York and London: Routledge, 2005), 19–86. 7. Kelly Brown Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church: A Womanist Perspective (Maryknoll: Orbis, 1999), 39. 8. hooks, Black Looks, 26–27; cf. 67–70. 9. hooks, Black Looks, 69. 10. hooks, Black Looks, 66. 11. Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church, 36. 12. Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church, 39. 13. hooks, Black Looks, 93. 14. hooks, Black Looks, 103. 15. Douglas, Sexuality and the Black Church, 83. 16. Elijah Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America (Atlanta: Secretarius MEMPS Publications, 1997), 58. This same metaphor appears again on page 60. 17. Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 58. 18. Jeffrey J. Kripal, The Serpent’s Gift (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006), 3. 19. Witt, Black Hunger, 115. 20. Elijah Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book One (Chicago: Muhammad’s Temple of Islam No. 2, 1967), 15. 21. Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book One, 49. This theme of dietary mimicking saturates both volumes. See page 9 in book one and in book two refer to pages 19–20, 37, 72, 116, and 135–36. 22. Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book Two (Atlanta: MEMPS, 1972), 107. Also see page 93 in book one. 23. Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book Two, 82. 24. Carole M. Counihan, ‘‘Female Identity, Food, and Power in Contemporary Florence,’’ Anthropological Quarterly (April 1988): 61, 53. 25. Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book One, 67. 26. Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book One, 81. 27. Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book One, 82. 28. Witt, Black Hunger, 116. 29. Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book One, 85. The entire section on Muhammad’s views on birth control can be seen on pages 83–87.

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30. Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book One, 84. 31. Laura Mamo and Jennifer R. Fishman, ‘‘Potency in All the Right Places: Viagra as a Technology of the Gendered Body’’ in Body and Society (London: SAGE Publications, 2001), 23. 32. Karl Evanzz, The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad (New York: Pantheon Books, 1999), 19. 33. Evanzz, The Messenger, 20. 34. Evanzz, The Messenger, 23–24. 35. See Bourdieu, Outline of a Theory of Practice, 21, 190–97. 36. Witt, Black Hunger, 104. 37. Witt, Black Hunger, 104. 38. Witt, Black Hunger, 104. 39. Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 171. 40. Muhammad, Message to the Blackman in America, 171. 41. Witt, Black Hunger, 104. 42. See, for example, Yancy, Whiteness and the Return of the Black Body, 369. 43. hooks, Black Looks, 106–7. See also Cherise Cheney, ‘‘Representin’ God: Rap, Religion, and the Politics of Culture,’’ The North Star: A Journal of African American Religious History 3, no. 1 (Fall 1999), 1–12. 44. hooks, Black Looks, 107. 45. hooks, Black Looks, 93. 46. Howard Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus & Other Problems for Men and Monotheism (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 15. Eilberg-Schwartz argues that the deification of masculinity justifies the social order. 47. Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus, 17. 48. Emphasis is ours. 49. Eilberg-Schwartz, God’s Phallus, 18. 50. Stephen D. Moore, God’s Beauty Parlor: And Other Queer Spaces in and around the Bible (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2001), 170. 51. Catherine Bell, Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 8. 52. Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book One, 116. 53. Witt, Black Hunger, 113. 54. Witt, Black Hunger, 114. 55. Sonsyrea Tate, Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam (New York: HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 83. It is important to note that the author spent her primary years while the NOI was under the leadership of Elijah Muhammad. Therefore, although the author remained a member in the NOI after the death of Muhammad, the quotes presented in this chapter from this text are within the context of Muhammad’s leadership. 56. Tate, Little X, 89.

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57. Michelle D. Byng, ‘‘Mediating Discrimination: Resisting Oppression among African-American Muslim Women,’’ Social Problem (1998): 482. 58. Byng, ‘‘Mediating Discrimination,’’ 482. 59. See Edward E. Curtis IV, Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006), 20–24. 60. Cynthia S’thembile West, ‘‘Revisiting Female Activism in the 1960’s: The Newark Branch Nation of Islam,’’ The Black Scholar 26, No. 3–4 (2001): 41. 61. Debra Mubashshir Majeed, ‘‘Clare Evans Muhammad: Pioneering Social Activism in the Original Nation of Islam,’’ Union Seminary Quarterly Review (2003): 218. It is important to note that the University of Islam presently operates a network of schools known as the Sister Clara Muhammad Schools. These schools provide both elementary and secondary education. 62. Majeed, ‘‘Clara Evans Muhammad,’’ 226. 63. West, ‘‘Revisiting Female Activism in the 1960’s,’’ 47. 64. Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 141. 65. Curtis, Black Muslim Religion, 149. 66. Evanzz, The Messenger, 209–10. 67. Evanzz, The Messenger, 211–12. 68. Douglas, Purity and Danger, 44. 69. Douglas, Purity and Danger, 49. 70. Muhammad, How to Eat to Live: Book Two, 101.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bourdieu, Pierre. Outline of a Theory of Practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977. Byng, Michelle D. ‘‘Mediating Discrimination: Resisting Oppression among African-American Muslim Women.’’ Social Problem (1982): 482. Counihan, Carole M. ‘‘Female Identity, Food, and Power in Contemporary Florence.’’ Anthropological Quarterly (1988): 53 and 61. Curtis, Edward. Islam in Black America: Identity, Liberation, and Difference in African-American Islamic Thought. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. . Black Muslim Religion in the Nation of Islam, 1960–1975. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2006. Douglas, Kelly Brown. Sexuality and the Black Church. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1999. . What’s Faith Got to Do with It? Black Bodies and Christian Souls. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005. Douglas, Mary. Food in the Social Order: Studies of Food and Festivities in Three American Communities (Mary Douglas Collected Works, Vol. 9). London and New York: Routledge, 2002.

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. Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology. London and New York: Routledge, 1996. . Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concept of Pollution and Taboo. London and New York: Routledge, 2002. Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard. God’s Phallus and Other Problems for Men and Monotheism. Boston: Pantheon Books, 1999. Essien-Udom, E. U. Black Nationalism: A Search for an Identity in America. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1962. Evanzz, Karl. The Messenger: The Rise and Fall of Elijah Muhammad. New York: Pantheon Books, 1999. Fanon, Franz. Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove Weidenfeld, 1982. Freud, Sigmund. Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Vols. 15–16. London: Hogarth Press, 1963. . Three Essays on Sexuality. Standard Edition. Vol. 7. London: Hogarth Press, 1953. . ‘‘Femininity.’’ In New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. Standard Edition. Vol. 22. London: Hogarth Press, 1955. Gatens, Moira. ‘‘A Critique of the Sex/Gender Distinction.’’ In A Reader in Feminist Knowledge, edited by S. Gunew. New York and London: Routledge, 1991. Gomez, Michael A. Black Crescent: The Experience and Legacy of African Muslims in America. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Hobson, Janell. Venus in the Dark: Blackness and Beauty in Popular Culture. New York and London: Routledge, 2005. hooks, bell. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Boston: South End Press, 1992. Kripal, Jeffrey J. The Serpent’s Gift. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 2006. Majeed, Debra Mubashshir. ‘‘Clare Evans Muhammad: Pioneering Social Activism in the Original Nation of Islam.’’ Union Seminary Quarterly Review (2003): 218. Mamo, Laura and Jennifer R. Fishman. ‘‘Potency in All the Right Places: Viagra as a Technology of the Gendered Body’’ in Body and Society. London: SAGE Publications, 2001. Moore, Stephen D. God’s Beauty Parlor: And Other Queer Speeches in and around the Bible. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2001. Muhammad, Elijah. Message to the Blackman in America. Maryland Heights, MO: Secretarius MEMPS, 1997. . How to Eat to Live: Book One. Chicago: Muhammad’s Temple of Islam No. 2, 1967. . How to Eat to Live: Book Two. Atlanta: MEMPS, 1972. Tate, Sonsyrea. Little X: Growing Up in the Nation of Islam. New York: Harper SanFrancisco, 1997.

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Walker, Dennis. Islam and the Search for African American Identity: Elijah Muhammad, Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. Atlanta: Clarity Press, 2005. West, Cynthia S’thembile. ‘‘Revisiting Female Activism in the 1960s: The Newark Branch of the Nation of Islam.’’ The Black Scholar 26, No. 3–4 (2001): 41–8. Witt, Doris. Black Hunger: Soul Food and America. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2004. Yancy, George. ‘‘Blackness and the Return of the Black Body.’’ PhD diss., Duquesne University, 2005.

CHAPTER

2

Receiving, Embodying, and Sharing ‘‘Divine Wisdom’’: Women in the Nation of Gods and Earths Felicia M. Miyakawa

A Nation can rise no higher than its woman. —The Honorable Elijah Muhammad

T

he Five Percent Nation—now more commonly known as the Nation of Gods and Earths—came into being in 1964 when its founder, Clarence 13X, left the Nation of Islam’s Temple # 7 in Harlem. Known to Five Percenters as Father Allah, the Father, or simply as Allah (which will be used in this chapter), Clarence 13X taught his young followers a complex, empowering theology rooted in Gnosticism, Kemetic (ancient Egyptian) history, Islamic references, Nation of Islam teachings, and most importantly, mathematics and science. In Five Percenter theology, each black man is considered to be a manifestation of the divine; men in the Nation are therefore known as gods . Women are known as earths because of their ability to give life. The primary role for women is to bear and raise children (known as ‘‘seeds’’ or sometimes as ‘‘stars’’). Earths typically receive their introductory theological instruction from the gods. They are encouraged to cook, keep house, and create a loving home environment for their gods and seeds, while gods are expected to take

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care of their families and guide the household. (These are, of course, ideals; single-parent homes demand different solutions, as will be discussed below.) Earths dress modestly, often covering their heads and three-fourths of their bodies, as appropriate to represent that the Earth is three-fourths covered by water. From an outsider’s perspective, the Nation of Gods and Earths seems patriarchal, restrictive, and inflexible, at least as far as women’s roles are concerned. But within these seemingly conservative and patriarchal structures, earths create networks of mentoring and uplift; found businesses, nonprofit, and political action organizations; challenge men to be better fathers and mates; pursue careers; search for the best ways to educate their children; and struggle with the reality of broken family units and the subsequent necessity of heading a household. In other words, earths have found creative ways to transcend their proscribed familial roles so as to become active voices in broader local, regional, national, and even global communities. These are strong, vital, often highly educated women who choose and embrace their way of life. This chapter will first briefly present the history and major tenets of Five Percenter teachings. Using a few case studies based on interviews, it will then explore how earths come to the Nation; how they receive their ‘‘knowledge of self’’ or spiritual training; and how they name themselves. I will also touch on family dynamics: how women and men interact in this culture, how women raise and educate their children, and what qualities women are expected to embody in order to reify the nuclear family structure. I will then turn to how earths transform their personal spiritual training into outward expressions of righteous living through the mentoring of children and other earths.

THE NATION OF GODS AND EARTHS: A BRIEF HISTORY Allah began his spiritual journey when he joined the Nation of Islam (hereafter NOI) in 1954 with the encouragement of his wife, Sister Dora, who had joined the NOI when Allah was serving as a soldier in Korea. As is typical of all male members of the NOI, Allah trained with the Fruit of Islam, the NOI’s security branch. Men in the Fruit of Islam were expected not only to be proficient in karate, but also to live righteous lives, and to know and be able to explain the NOI’s lessons at any moment. Training and learning with these like-minded men helped Allah to hone his own understanding of the lessons and to see the importance of the lessons in everyday life. According to most sources, the Five Percent Nation began in 1964 when Allah left the NOI for reasons that have not been clearly determined. After leaving Temple # 7 (the same Temple where Malcolm X had been minister,

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later to be followed by Minister Louis Farrakhan), Allah began to gather other former Fruit of Islam who shared his passion for reaching the youth. Together, they began to teach their precious lessons to street youth, spreading the ‘‘knowledge of self’’ through oral transmission. The lessons came just in time for many young black men caught in the precarious balance of gang warfare, racial upheavals, and diminishing governmental funding for local programs. Indeed, the socio-cultural environment of Harlem and the Bronx in the mid-1960s is crucial to understanding the Five Percenters’ early history. For young black men living in a city and country that seemed to have forgotten them, the lessons were life affirming and empowering. The youths now had a blueprint for and encouragement to pursue righteous living. Allah and other early leaders of the Nation (collectively known as the elders) taught new gods and earths a combination of catechism-like lessons inherited from the NOI and new lessons devised by Allah and his righthand man, Justice. Gods and earths studied the lessons with the guidance of a mentor, or ‘‘enlightener’’; this practice continues today. All gods and earths must be able to ‘‘show and prove’’ (that is, memorize, argue for, explain in depth, and apply to practical situations) each lesson before moving on to the next set of lessons. Because these lessons have been discussed at length in other sources, I will not examine them in detail here, but some attention to a few key lessons will help to clarify the Five Percenter way of life. The lessons begin with two devised by Allah and Justice: the ‘‘Science of Supreme Mathematics’’ and the ‘‘Supreme Alphabet.’’ These lessons are fundamental tools for understanding the remaining lessons. In fact, gods and earths consider mathematics the key to understanding everything in the universe. According to Allah’s teachings, each number has a specific symbolic meaning, and these meanings can be combined and manipulated in order to ferret out truth. The meanings assigned to numerals are as follows: 1 = knowledge; 2 = wisdom; 3 = understanding; 4 = culture or freedom; 5 = power or refinement; 6 = equality; 7 = god; 8 = build and destroy; 9 = born; 0 = cipher. Each number also has an extended definition that clarifies the number’s significance. The first principle of knowledge, for example, is defined as follows: ‘‘Knowledge is to know, look, listen, observe and respect. Knowledge is the key to all aspects of life. Knowledge is the foundation of all things in existence.’’1 The meanings of each number are often used in place of the numbers themselves in conversation to help gods and earths make sense of their daily lives. For example, a 35-year-old woman might explain her age to another earth by saying, ‘‘My physical degree is understanding power.’’ Here she references numbers 3 (understanding) + 5 (power). Or, an earth might relate to another earth that she has been in the NGE for nine years by saying ‘‘I’ve had the knowledge for born years.’’ Dates are also subjected to mathematic

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formulas. Gods and earths routinely greet a new day by contemplating the day’s mathematics as illustrated in the following example from May 3, 2007: Today’s Mathematics is Understanding, which is to see clearly, clarity. This is conscious (1) development (2) (1+2=3). I was told that Understanding is also to see things for what they are not what they appear to be, I don’t agree fully with that, because that doesn’t necessarily bring an Understanding or Clarity. It’s better to see things as they are and what they can and should be, because just seeing things as they are doesn’t mean it will be cleared up . . . Understanding is seeing things for what they are and what they can and should be.2

In this example, the God Allah Victorious begins with the day’s associated meaning (3 = understanding). He relates what he has been taught, but also challenges the information he has inherited, replacing this information with his own explanation. Through this process of challenging, reasoning, and logically explaining concepts through numbers, Allah Victorious ‘‘shows and proves’’ how he sees the day’s unfolding. Gods and earths apply numbers to everything they encounter in a similar fashion. As Victorious Lanasia Earth explained to me, ‘‘mathematics makes the invisible visible.’’ After mastering the Science of Supreme Mathematics, initiates move on to the Supreme Alphabet. When studying the alphabet, they learn that each letter has an associated mystical meaning. Words are treated as acronyms to find their true meaning. The word Allah, for example, is ‘‘broken down’’ to reveal Arm-Leg-Leg-Arm-Head, therefore ‘‘showing and proving’’ that God is alive in human form. The word ‘‘Islam’’ breaks down to I-Self-LordAm-Master, ‘‘showing and proving’’ that the gods and earths do not worship a ‘‘mystery’’ God (a reference to the Christian God who cannot be seen or experienced with the senses) but instead recognize the divinity inherent in themselves and their ability to rule their own lives. While words such as Allah and Islam have relatively fixed meanings, the Supreme Alphabet is a flexible tool. Although fixed meanings and parables were initially assigned to each letter, gods and earths freely choose alternate readings of specific letters to find the meaning of certain words. The word peace, for example, can have any number of interpretations, including the following found in publications by and about earths: Positive-Education-Always-Creates-Earths; Pleasant-Educated-Articulate-Conscious-Enchanting; Productive-Education-Always-Cultivates-Equality; and Perfect-Enchanting-Amazing-CreativeEducated. The possibilities are endless, but each interpretation gives a new understanding of the word peace. After mastering mathematics and the alphabet, gods and earths learn a number of lessons also included in NOI training, although some of these

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lessons are taught in a different order. They begin with the ‘‘Student Enrollment Lesson,’’ 10 questions and answers concerning the population of various ethnic groups on the planet. Next the initiates move on to ‘‘English Lesson No. C1,’’ which details the mission of Master Fard Muhammad (Elijah Muhammad’s teacher and the founder of the NOI) and then continue on to the ‘‘Lost-Found Moslem Lessons’’ in two parts. The Lost-Found Lessons are particularly significant because the Five Percent Nation draws both its name and its identity from mathematical percentages found in Lost-Found Lesson No. 2, questions 14 through 16: 14. Who are the 85 percent? The uncivilized people; poison animal eaters; slaves from mental death and power; people who do not know who the Living God is, or their origin in this world and who worship that direction but are hard to lead in the right direction. 15. Who are the 10 percent? The rich slave-makers of the poor, who teach the poor lies to believe: that the Almighty, True and Living God is a spook and cannot be seen by the physical eye; otherwise known as the bloodsuckers of the poor. 16. Who are the 5 percent? They are the poor righteous teachers who do not believe in the teachings of the 10 percent and are all-wise and know who the Living God is and teach that the Living God is the Son of Man, the Supreme Being, or the Black Man of Asia, and teach Freedom, Justice and Equality to all the human family of the planet Earth; otherwise known as civilized people, also as Muslims and Muslim Sons.

Five Percenters are thus those who have knowledge of self and are charged with sharing that knowledge with the 85 percent. The Lost-Found Lessons are followed by two final lessons. ‘‘Actual Facts,’’ borrowed from the NOI, is a series of 18 questions and answers concerning the features and measurements of the Earth. The final lesson, ‘‘Solar Facts,’’ which is not included in NOI training, accounts for the distances between planetary bodies. Gods and earths begin their training with mathematics and end with science. In the NOI, all initiates study their lessons, but daily contemplation of the lessons is more common among NOI theologians or the Fruit of Islam, the NOI’s security branch. Given that all NOI men must join the NOI, all NOI men at some point have the opportunity to concentrate on the lessons and their applications for righteous living. Allah taught that the knowledge of the lessons was the foundation of a righteous life for everyone. All gods and earths were (and are) expected to learn the lessons, contemplate them, be ready to ‘‘show and prove,’’ and apply the lessons to daily life, distinguishing the regimen for the general membership from that of NOI.

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The NGE’s emphasis on math also differentiates it from the NOI. Consider, for example, the lyrics to the Nation’s official anthem, ‘‘The Enlightener’’: The Knowledge is the foundation, the Wisdom is the way, The Understanding shows you, that you are on your way. The Culture is I-God, the Power is the truth, The Equality only shows you, that you have planted your roots. God came to teach us of the righteous way, Had to build to beborn on this glorious day. The Knowledge of the Cipher is to enlighten you, To let you know that God is right amongst you (Mentor Youth Street Academy).

The words in boldface are all consecutive steps in the Supreme Mathematics. That is, knowledge = 1, wisdom = 2, understanding = 3, and so forth. Each time Five Percenters collectively sing their anthem they reinforce the power of mathematics in their daily lives. And, in fact, the hip-hop trio Brand Nubian released a version of ‘‘The Enlightener’’ under the title ‘‘Allah and Justice’’ on their 1992 album In God We Trust, making the anthem commercially available. During their training, gods and earths typically choose a new ‘‘righteous’’ name. Names for new gods usually include the name Allah, and names for earths typically include the name earth; these are considered gendered ‘‘family’’ names. Earths usually choose their own names after careful thought, although sometimes enlighteners provide a new name. In some cases, enlighteners may choose names for earths that do not match what the earth herself strives to be. When this happens, earths will sometimes choose a new righteous name at a later date. The Los Angeles-based earth Mecca Islam, for example, received her name from her educator, Shah Islam Allah. Initially he gave her the name Mecca, in reference to the holy city of Mecca, the ‘‘root’’ of civilization, but she felt that something was missing from her name. When they later decided to ‘‘build together as god and earth’’—that is, pursue a committed relationship—Mecca took his middle name, Islam, as her last name. Whatever the process by which an earth receives her new name, ‘‘righteous names’’ should emphasize attributes that the earth already embodies or hopes to embody. This should be an empowering, self-actualizing process, but the journey is often difficult to begin. Choosing a new name is generally the final step of renouncing life in the ‘‘deadworld’’ and can cause friction with the earth’s family. I Medina Peaceful Earth’s process toward her

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righteous name reveals some of the internal and external conflicts of this process. After initially resisting choosing a new name, she began to welcome the transformation, as she explains: At the time, I just didn’t see the importance of [choosing a righteous name]. I thought it should be enough for people to recognize who I am through my deeds . . . the kind of person I am, how I interact with people, and my activities that positively impact others. I also thought of what seemed to be the inconvenience of having to tell everyone that I knew my chosen name and the reasons why, and some of the grey areas (what should I put on resumes and business cards, how do I sign important documents or checks, etc.). I didn’t want to go through an entire dissertation with every single person I encountered about why I changed my name . . . . I soon understood how empowering it is to choose a name for yourself based on qualities you currently [have] or strive to embody. I understood that throughout the process of our enslavement, that was a key aspect of our identity that was taken from us . . . . I also began to see it as a great segue into conversation about the Nation of Gods and Earths, specifically Nation History, with a name like Medina. I would have short and long versions of the breakdown of my name and the Nation History to go with it, which provided teachable moments for people I interacted with who never heard of the Nation of Gods and Earths. I used it as an opportunity for a form of public relations, if you will, so that with me, my co-workers, children I work with, friends, whomever, can say they at least know one person in the Nation of Gods and Earths . . . . Through building and elevating, I began to see that your name gives you a legacy to live out. It helps chart our path, good or bad. It holds you accountable for being that which you claim to be and is a significant aspect of living out the reality of being God or Earth. If my name is I Medina Peaceful Earth, then I am held accountable to living out the reality of being a warrior who brings balance and homeostasis, and creates an environment that fosters growth and development in others (This is the short version.). That is a heavy responsibility.3

As I Medina suggests, earths continually strive to live up to the names they have chosen for themselves. Ma’at Sincere Earth chose her first name after finding the word in a book by historian and Africanist Tony Browder and reflecting on the word’s meaning: Ma’at is the female personification of supreme balance, truth, and righteousness, all these things that in the Nation we are taught . . . .And one thing I connected with it was . . . the female personification of . . . knowledge—that’s what I am. You know, I’m that wisdom. I manifest the

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knowledge. And also, it also stands for supreme balance and I was born under the sign of Libra, you know. So how I see myself is a lot of times if I’m not balanced, I can see where I need to be refined . . . so I strive to find that balance. I strive to deal with truth, righteousness; you know all these things are important to me.

She chose her second name, Sincere, at a later date, after watching many of her fellow gods and earths stray from the Nation. She, on the other hand, remained steadfast and therefore ‘‘showed and proved that I was Sincere with this.’’ Some earths retain their given (or honorable) first names and add on new righteous names. Eboni Joy Asiatic Earth, for example, was given the name Eboni Joy at birth. She disliked her name for most of her childhood and only embraced it after discovering that Eboni means black. She kept the name Joy to have an attribute in her name for which to strive: ‘‘[Joy] is my thing that I try to live out daily. You know one thing we learn about is the Twelve Jewels of Islam, and the things that are necessary to live a righteous way of life and a peaceful and balanced way of life. And the last jewel is happiness . . . . And in the 120 lessons it says ‘what will be our reward for the destruction of the devil?’ And it’s peace and happiness.’’ Each time she explains her righteous name, Eboni Joy, she is reminded of the lessons she has learned and the attribute she hopes to cultivate. The lessons Allah taught his followers in the NGE’s early days are still the bedrock of the Nation. They are collectively known as the 120 lessons or as the 120 degrees. Additional lessons known as Plus Lessons exist—the Twelve Jewels of Islam to which Eboni Joy refers above is one of the Plus Lessons—but these lessons do not receive the same emphasis as the 120 lessons. The practice of studying under a specific educator or enlightener also continues today. Lessons are typically taught by word of mouth, although ‘‘newborns’’—gods and earths beginning their study of the lessons—do sometimes receive photocopied versions of the lessons early in their training. Allah’s message of godhood swept across New York City during the 1960s. As the gods and earths spread throughout the city, they renamed its boroughs among the members. Harlem, the birthplace of the Nation, became known as Mecca in reference to the holy city of Islam. Brooklyn, the borough to which the NGE next spread, became known as Medina, again in reference to a city important in Islam. The Bronx became Pelan. Today gods and earths can be found all over the planet Earth, and each new location is renamed using the Supreme Alphabet. For example: Los Angeles is known as Love Allah; New Jersey has become New Jerusalem; New Haven, Connecticut is called New Heaven; and Atlanta, Georgia is recognized as Allah’s Garden.

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Allah was assassinated in June 1969. His murder is still unsolved. In the wake of Allah’s departure (or ‘‘return to the essence’’), his young Nation floundered for a couple of years as gods and earths mourned for their Father and wondered what to do next. The Nation began to regroup by 1971 and held the first ‘‘Show and Prove’’—a gathering to honor the Father, commune as gods and earths, and teach the babies—in June of that year. Gods and earths do not meet in mosques, temples, or churches. Rather, they gather once a month in local ‘‘parliaments’’ (usually held in outdoor spaces) to share food, ‘‘build’’ (converse in a positive manner) with each other, and hold science fairs and other activities for their children. They also gather in Harlem every June for the annual ‘‘Show and Prove,’’ which is held in the Harriet Tubman School around the corner from the Allah School, a storefront academy in operation since the late 1960s; Tubman also functions as the Nation’s headquarters. In recent years the Nation has begun to organize at the regional level; earths are proactive in this regional organization process. But the NGE has no particular leader or administrative body and answers to no authority (although elders in the Nation are highly respected). Each god makes decisions as he sees fit; all strive to live ‘‘righteous’’ lives, but the details are left to individual choices. Together, gods, earths, and their seeds, make daily decisions about themselves individually and about their separate collective orbits. The remainder of this chapter will consider in particular how earths function within this paradigm.

THE NGE AS A CULTURE Before turning to how earths live out this way of life on a daily basis, it is important to understand that gods and earths consider what they practice to be a way of life or culture. They vehemently deny that what they practice amounts to a religion. Although they are frequently referred to as Black Muslims, they do not practice the religion of Islam. In itself, the term Islam means submission; Islam as a religion encourages submission to the will of Allah. But this is a complicated issue for the Five Percent Nation, since they teach that every black man is a manifestation of Allah. As mentioned above, Five Percenters break down the word Islam to meanI-Self-Lord-Am-Master, emphasizing the deity inherent in each black man. Allah is not a transcendent being; rather, Allah is embodied in the physical self of each black man. Submission to a higher, invisible power is therefore irrelevant for gods and earths. Islam also involves a certain amount of ritual and common practice. Orthodox Muslims, for example, follow the five pillars of Islam: acknowledging that there is no god but Allah, fasting, praying five times per day, giving alms to the poor, and making a pilgrimage to the Holy City of Mecca if

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possible. Gods and earths may choose to practice any or all of these pillars, but in general tend not to advocate strict codes of behavior with a few exceptions: gods and earths are expected to avoid mating with Caucasians and are strongly encouraged to give up consumption of pork. Many gods and earths are vegetarian or vegan, but this is an individual choice. The religion of Islam can also be traced back to a clear point of beginning. For most Muslims, this point of beginning was the revelation of the Qur’an to the prophet Muhammed in the seventh century. But gods and earths believe that what they practice is older than the religion of Islam. As Shabazz Adew Allah argues, Islam is the black man’s true nature, not a religion: ‘‘Islam is not something that is given to the Blackman, Islam is the very essence in which the Blackman is created, like light is the very nature of day and darkness is the very nature of night. Religion is a way of life that can be made, un-made or re-made by mankind, but Islam cannot be re-made or un-made for Islam always existed. It has no beginning nor ending.’’4 Or as I Majestic Allah explains ‘‘the NGE does not use the term Islam to be seen as Muslims, but to underscore the correlation between a civilization’s development of human behavior, and its development of science.’’5 In other words, for gods and earths, Islam is not a set of rituals to practice or beliefs to defend. Islam is, rather, their birthright, legacy, and scientific grounding. This understanding of the word Islam is the basis of Shabazz Adew Allah’s definition of an earth: ‘‘a righteous Blackwoman who adheres to her true culture which is Islam.’’6 Definitions of religion and culture can help to clarify this issue. The Concise Oxford Dictionary, for example, defines religion as ‘‘the belief in and worship of a superhuman controlling power, especially a personal God or gods.’’ With its emphasis on superhuman power, this definition clearly does not apply to the NGE, which actively teaches that God is not a ‘‘spook’’ or invisible ‘‘mystery’’ god. In other words, God is not superhuman since God is present in each black man. A Dictionary of Sociology defines ‘‘religion’’ more broadly as a ‘‘set of beliefs, symbols, and practices (for example rituals), which is based on the idea of the sacred, and which unites believers into a socio-religious community.’’ Again, this definition does not apply to the NGE. Although the NGE is certainly a tightly knit community of likeminded thinkers, its focus is not on the sacred. Culture, on the other hand, can be defined as ‘‘the way of life of a people, including patterns of both thought and behavior.’’7 The key here is the phrase ‘‘way of life,’’ a phrase gods and earths consistently use to describe their nation. While gods and earths do acknowledge their debt to various religious traditions, they hold that their way of life is a new way of thinking. As I Majestic Allah argues, ‘‘the NGE is a new value system that has similarities to and influences from a variety of Cultures / Religions (Islam, Buddhism,

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Gnosticism), but is a unique ethno-cultural response to the condition of people of color in contemporary society.’’8 Becoming part of this culture is thus a two-fold practice: remembering or rediscovering one’s roots in ‘‘original’’ civilizations, and applying the values of ‘‘original’’ civilizations to present conditions. Submission to a deity or higher power and adhering to a strict set of rituals are not part of this process. Again and again, earths are defined as black women who live righteously, in tune with their origins. But this culture also stresses individuality, as Eboni Joy Asiatic Earth explains in the following extended definition of an earth: Being an Earth means being the best woman that you can possibly be, being a mother to the young, a role model to those yet to reach their full maturity, and first and foremost a student, sister, and wife to Allah God—the original (Indigenous) man with knowledge of himself as the supreme being in the universe and who lives in agreement with that truth . . . . We, as a nation, have our agreed upon restrictions—no pork, no marrying /mating with Caucasians. Outside of that, we are free to live our culture through the proper application of the math. How I choose to be Earth in comparison to how my sister chooses to be Earth may be vastly different. In having knowledge of self we are required to see and acknowledge our best parts, poor parts, and worst parts—refine the poor parts into useful land and destroy the worst parts of our character and behavior, being re-born as a true and living Earth.9

Eboni Joy emphasizes that earths have a great deal of freedom of choice provided they are in tune with NGE culture. But what is expected of an earth? What did Allah teach about the role of earths in the Nation?

WHAT IS AN EARTH? In his book In the Name of Allah: A History of Clarence 13X and the Five Percent Nation, Wakeel Allah gives the following extended account of what Allah taught his earliest followers about earths. He taught his Five Percenters that the Black woman is the ‘‘mother of civilization.’’ He taught that her rightful place was to be a Queen at the side of Allah. He explained to his followers that the Planet Earth symbolizes the Black Woman and is her twin in nature. As the Earth produces life, so does the Black woman produce life and she ‘‘is the field from which the Black Nation is produced.’’ In this sense, Five Percenter women are called ‘‘Earths.’’ Her astral twin in nature is the ‘‘Moon.’’ As the Moon reflects the

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light of the Sun, so does the Black Woman reflect the truth given her by the Black Man. In Supreme Mathematics, she was symbolized by the principle ‘‘Wisdom.’’ Because of her nature, Allah stressed that Five Percenters should treat their women right but shouldn’t lose focus of their roles.10

This recounting of Allah’s teachings about earths’ attributes points to several key concepts that I will consider in turn. First, Allah taught that earths manifest attributes similar to those of the Earth. Indeed, he describes the planet Earth as the earth’s ‘‘twin in nature.’’ As Wakeel Allah demonstrates, Allah used a variety of mathematical and planetary metaphors to describe earths, comparing them both to the planet Earth and to the Moon. Earths are so-called because their ability to give life mirrors the planet’s ability to bring forth and sustain life, but the metaphor can be extended further, as Eboni Joy Asiatic Earth reveals in a discussion of the biological and physical parallels between women and the planet: Earth is a title unique to women of the Nation of Gods and Earths. We Earths refer to ourselves as such because as the original (Indigenous) women of this planet all human life was spawned from our womb; just as all life on the planet earth was born from her habitable properties—an extended water supply that is drinkable, oxygenated, and supports the generation and stability of cellular structures, large land masses, moderate temperatures, a breathable atmosphere, volcanic conditions, and gravitation. These characteristics of our home planet can all be either literally or figuratively applied to the first home of man—his mother—because we original women’s bodies are naturally created suitable for habitation, as is the land and water of the planet Earth.11

Clearly, this earth embraces and celebrates the parallels to be found between Earth’s natural abundance and fertility and the life-giving powers of an earth. But her description of earths also makes an important connection between ‘‘original’’ women of the past—the first women to give life and populate the planet—and ‘‘original’’ women of the present—women who are descended from the first ‘‘original’’ people and proudly continue this lineage by creating more life. In so doing, she points to another of Allah’s teachings. Because of the Earth’s status as ‘‘original’’ woman, he taught that earths are the mothers of civilization. (It is worth noting that while ‘‘original’’ is generally understood to mean black or of African descent, other races are found in the Nation of Gods and Earths. One of the earths I interviewed is of Mexican lineage; another is of Iranian descent. Latino gods and earths are not uncommon, and Asian gods and earths are increasing in number. Caucasians are nominally excluded, although individual Caucasians can be recognized as

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righteous provided they ‘‘acknowledge’’ the NGE way of life and strive to live righteously.) Other accounts of these parallels between earths and Earth highlight the historical and ecological background of this metaphor. For example, C’BS Alife Allah, a prolific writer, poet, and blogger, points out that in most indigenous cultures, the Earth is referred to as a mother figure. As he explains: ‘‘Original People historically personify their environment as ‘Mother Earth.’ This is important to us as Earth is what we have chosen to call the black woman. By showing a positive relationship between how we relate to our black woman, we can show a similar analogy on how to relate to our immediate environment for the benefit of all peoples.’’12 In other words, because the black woman metaphorically represents the Earth and is considered the mother of civilization, understanding and caring for the Earth by extension means better care for our larger environment and future generations. He goes on to compare the training of the earth with the scientific study of ecology. Ecology is a branch of science concerned with the interrelationship of organisms and their environments. When the Blackman raises the Earth to her fullest Equality that is an act of Ecology. He is showing her the relationship between her and her twin in nature. The same care that goes into raising the Earth to her fullest Equality is also the duty of God in reference to ‘Mother Earth.’ He is the maker and owner of ‘Mother Earth.’ As maker and owner he is the MOST responsible to make sure that the planet remains a home for all of the human families of the planet Earth. The Earth, when she is raised to her fullest Equality will want to make sure that her twin in nature is respected and cared for also. When all of the above is fulfilled we are dealing with her highest Ecology.13

‘‘Raising an earth to her fullest equality’’ translates to bringing an earth to knowledge of herself by educating her in the ways of the Nation, a task set aside for gods. The Nation has frequently been criticized for its patriarchal organization, but the prominent metaphor of woman as Earth speaks to a matriarchal significance as well. As Professor Carol Ochs has documented, matriarchal religions associate women with soil and earth, often combining the concept of earth and mother because both produce life.14 Earths are cherished in the NGE and are valued for their particular role in continuing the culture. As Mecca Islam related to me, ‘‘the Blackman is God, but at the same point in time, you know, a man can’t create life. He needs his counterpart.’’ Reverence for the Earth’s virtual autonomy in procreative and nurturing functions thus complicates our understanding of the patriarchy.

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When it comes to daily social practices such as dress, earths try to fashion themselves in a manner that is refined and respectful of teachings from gods. Allah taught that women should dress modestly to mirror the planet Earth. Like Muslim women, earths are encouraged to practice a form of purdah as a style of modest dress. Many adopt a practice of covering threefourths of their bodies to approximate the planet’s proportion of earth to water. As one God explains, ‘‘The Earth is approximately covered on its surface by 3/4ths of water. The Blackwoman, out of respect for herself, her culture, her children and her God, covers herself the same way.’’15 This ‘‘dress code’’ is not required but is advocated as a personal statement of righteousness for earths who choose to ‘‘be refined’’ and cover themselves. First, earths often wear long patterned skirts and head wraps. Although head wraps may not be required, if the earth chooses to wear pants or expose her arms or legs, the hair should definitely be wrapped. The belly should not be visible; erogenous zones (breasts and buttocks) should be covered; and clothing should fit loosely. 16 As with all teachings in the NGE, these guidelines are subject to personal interpretation. Ultimately, it is up to each earth to determine for herself how she will adhere to the conventions. As one earth comments, ‘‘I know there are sisters who are more refined or covered than me (i.e., showing no arms or skin at all) and I am thankful that there is diversity within 3/4ths so that every sister does not have to rock it [wear it] in the same way.’’17 For earths, one of the benefits of dressing within NGE conventions is feeling that one is being immediately recognized as an earth. On her blog, ‘‘Refined and Fly,’’ I Medina Peaceful Earth offers an interesting account of her progress towards refinement. She did not wear refinement at her first two ‘‘Show and Proves.’’ Choosing to do so at her third ‘‘Show and Prove’’ brought a new understanding of the benefits of refinement. Some sisters who were not dressed accordingly may have been supporters of the nation but not participants, or relatives of people in the nation, or they just may be sisters who simply do not wear 3/4, or they may have been doing the knowledge, just as I was my first year. Nobody said, ‘‘Peace Earth!’’ to me that year, cuz I didn’t look like one! Looking back on it, how in the hell could anybody tell if I was an earth or not? I definitely got more of the ‘‘Peace Queen’’ . . . this year, it felt great to walk down the street and in the school and hear ‘‘Peace Earth!’’

Choosing refinement therefore not only bespeaks modesty and righteousness, it also clarifies the earth’s identity as a member of the Nation. According to Allah B, the practice of three-fourths can be traced to the NOI’s own dress code: women in the NOI cover their arms and legs and

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typically wear head coverings. Many of the earliest earths ‘‘came out of the mosque,’’ that is, they were members of the NOI prior to their affiliation with the Five Percent Nation. Continuing their mode of modest dress therefore seemed natural to the earliest earths. Some of them transitioned to refinement as early as the first ‘‘Show and Prove’’ in 1971. Allah B, in fact, recalled that in the Nation’s early days, an earth could cause quite a scandal simply by wearing pants. Earths decide to wear three-fourths for a number of reasons, but find mathematical truths behind the convention of purdah, as Mecca Islam explains: ‘‘3 to us is understanding and 4 is culture. Since I understand my culture (3+4 =7) I should be able to manifest who God is. I understand my culture and am Allah’s representative, so even if you don’t see a God present, you see his Queen who represents him, because there is no mystery god. When he’s not here, I still have to be a righteous, refined Queen.’’ Mecca Islam’s choice to be refined is not just to be a righteous reflection of her god. She also chooses refinement to live up to her name: ‘‘My name is Mecca Islam: I should look covered up; I should look refined. Mecca Islam would not look right and exact if I was wearing booty shorts and a halter top, nor would I feel right.’’ Finally, Allah taught that earths should honor their gods by reflecting the light of knowledge they receive from their gods. In other words, gods are responsible for the spiritual training of the earths. Born Justice Allah elaborates on this process: ‘‘The Earth is a black woman like no other woman on this planet. Her duty is to reflect the knowledge (light) of her God and to teach the babies the righteous way of life. This means to teach them how to live out the Supreme Mathematics (life).’’18 Born Justice Allah emphasizes the familial expectations of an earth, ‘‘She must care for her God and seeds, live according to the principles of mathematics, and teach these principles to her children.’’ He also indicates a hierarchy here: god teaches his knowledge to his earth. She then reflects his light/knowledge and passes it on to the babies. Born Justice Allah encourages gods to ‘‘show [an earth] how to make her mathematics walk and talk,’’ or teach their earths well. A poorly taught earth will be the reflection of her god. His reputation will suffer, and it will be the result of his own poor teaching.19 Furthermore, a god’s responsibility does not end with his earth’s education, as Universal Shaamguadd Allah explains: ‘‘Our Father [Allah] taught us that not only should we teach and educate our women, we should treat them right, to love them, respect them and protect them, even pamper them when possible, however that we should always stand fast as Lord and Master of that universe.’’20 Despite the emphasis on being ‘‘Lord and Master,’’ true and living gods must lead their households honorably and respect their earths. Abusing, neglecting, or abandoning their earths are unacceptable behaviors.

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Elders in the Nation recall that the earliest earths came to the Nation through their gods or male relatives who were already affiliated with the Nation. This pattern continues today. Earths typically learn their lessons from gods who have already completed their own lessons. In many cases, earths first learn of the Nation from elder brothers or cousins who are learning the lessons but are unwilling to share the lessons with the girls. In such situations, earths often have to be proactive about their own education; earths who truly want knowledge of self often have to seek out their own educators. Earths may help a newborn earth begin the lessons, but ultimately, a god must be responsible for her training. As a result of the intimate relationship that develops between a god and earth during this teaching process, an earth’s enlightener often becomes her life partner (or, in their words, they begin to ‘‘build as god and earth’’). According to Allah B, Father Allah was very aware of the attraction produced between enlightener and earth. For that reason, Allah taught the gods to only educate earths that they intended to keep as their own earths. Theoretically, then, during an earth’s education, the god is in fact training the earth to be his earth. In actuality, many of the earths I interviewed were not in a committed relationship with their educator. But Allah B related to me that because of the intimacy between enlightener and earth, if an earth approaches him to be her educator, his response is to have his earth teach the new earth until another god—preferably one without an earth or one searching for an additional earth—can be found. Earths are therefore trusted with training children in the ways of NGE culture, but the training of other earths is left to gods. Through the process of building with her god, an earth learns how to be a good mate and mother, two of the roles earths typically fulfill. As Born Justice Allah explains, there are certain expectations in place for earths. The Earth’s jewels are (knowledge-wisdom-understanding) knowing how to keep her god (man), how to keep their home, how to cook, sew, and in general how to act at home and abroad. She is wise in the way of education, business and other life skills that she needs to build (survive), in this day and time not to be barefoot, pregnant and always in the kitchen like the slave master taught the black men and black woman to be during the time of slavery.21

Although Born Justice Allah makes clear that earths should practice basic homemaking skills, he also emphasizes skills and attributes associated with modern women. Earths should be educated, understand business, and be able to survive on their own. In other words, although earths rely on gods to teach them the knowledge, they should not have to depend on gods for

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their food, shelter, and clothing: they need to be self-sufficient. In some communities, the Nation offers earth classes to teach homemaking skills as well as more practical skills that reflect today’s society, such as managing finances and buying real estate. More often, however, earths learn what they need to know about homemaking from informal association with other earths. And while the NGE sees childbearing and rearing as essential parts of being an earth, women are not to be trapped into continuous, consecutive pregnancies. Furthermore, earths are not discouraged from taking jobs outside the home. Just as in other areas of NGE culture, decisions about daily life are left to individual gods and earths. Earths have the right to decide (with their gods if they are partnered, or by themselves if they are single) how best to provide for their families. An earth’s training also centers on the lessons that all gods and earths learn. Very few of these lessons specifically address the role of women in the Nation of Gods and Earths, but earths are encouraged to interpret the lessons from a point of view specific to earths. As Victorious Lanasia Earth put it, ‘‘you can find the Earth in all of those degrees.’’ For example, the first Student Enrollment Lesson asks: ‘‘Who is the Original Man?’’ The answer to this question is, ‘‘The original man is the Asiatic Blackman, the Maker, the Owner, the Cream of the planet earth, Father of Civilization, God of the universe.’’ Earths instead ponder the identity of the original woman, answering, as Smas Born Earth does: ‘‘The original woman is the Asiatic Blackwoman, the co-maker, the co-owner, the Mother of Civilization.’’ Lost-found Lesson No. 1, question 14—commonly referred to as the 14th degree—does specifically address women. This lesson describes the NOI’s Muslim Girls Training (MGT) and General Civilization Classes (GCC) in which NOI women are taught to sew, cook, and keep house. Again, earths interpret this lesson broadly. As Victorious Lanasia Earth points out, the 14th degree is not just for the earths. Single gods who want to eat and have clean clothes have to learn these homemaking skills, too. When learning their lessons, earths also take into account that the social and cultural context in which the lessons were formulated and first taught no longer exists. As Irize Refined Earth explained, the lessons as taught in the 1950s offer a certain amount of truth, but the application and interpretation change with the times. The lessons that teach about the roles of gods and earths within families, for example, do not take into account the high number of modern families headed by single parents, or those families with working mothers. Indeed, while the NGE considers the family unit of god, earth, and seeds (or sun, moon, and stars) to be the building block of the Nation, the concept of marriage is flexible and the actual makeup of modern families is diverse. Father Allah was legally married (‘‘married under the government’’)

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to Sister Dora, but according to Allah B, Father Allah also kept at least two additional earths. Allah taught his followers that legal marriages were unnecessary, reasoning that because black women already belong to black men, black women cannot be given in matrimony by the government. For Allah, purchasing a marriage license was an exercise in redundancy; gods were purchasing something that already belonged to them. All that was necessary to claim a wife was to obtain the earth’s consent. Nevertheless, while many gods and earths form common-law relationships, some choose to marry under the government. A small percentage form polygamous families with one god and multiple earths. And like mainstream American families, some NGE families are headed by single gods; others are led by single earths. Although the lessons may suggest prescribed familial roles and clear gender hierarchy, the reality is much more complex, for this culture emphasizes flexibility. As they do in all areas of their lives, gods and earths apply the lessons to their familial lives based on what is practical and meaningful as they strive to live righteously.

ROLES OF THE EARTHS: NURTURING AND SHARING DIVINE WISDOM As nurturers within their family units and in NGE and work communities, earths typically transform what they have learned into teaching or mentoring. Just as it is a god’s responsibility to teach his earth, so it is the earth’s responsibility to begin her children’s instruction. As Eboni Joy Asiatic Earth explains, ‘‘women are the first teachers of the seeds, and what we know to be valuable, right, and just, we instill in them, ensuring a bright future for our nation collectively. We are inherently nurturing and empathetic, which makes us superb caretakers.’’22 Earths help to instill the value of righteous living in their seeds with daily reinforcement of the lessons. Mecca Islam, the mother of five children, ‘‘builds’’ with her children each morning on the day’s mathematics, asking them ‘‘how do you see today’s math?’’ The children respond at levels appropriate to their ages, but all engage in the process. Nurturing the children is not limited to mothers, however. Earths without children are still encouraged to nurture seeds and some choose childcare as their profession. Eboni Joy, for example, has no children of her own but is a professional nanny. Earths are not limited to roles of mate and mother. Indeed, they are expected to embody righteousness at all levels of daily interaction, in whatever career path they choose. Eboni Joy explains this well: As sisters with knowledge of self, who are aware of our origins in this world and labor to regain our civilization, our role of Earth is greatest displayed in our rearing of the babies, however, it is not limited to that role alone.

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We are held accountable for living in accord to Supreme Mathematics and the moral, ethical, principles that the math entails. By living the math, portraying it in our ways and actions, verbalizing it in our wise choice of words, we become living examples of earthliness and show forth the power of God by reflecting knowledge of self in the physical, as stated above, through wise words, ways and actions, and in righteous deeds. We reflect God, [i.e.] the Asiatic Black man with knowledge of self, as the moon reflects the light of the sun, showing that the sun always shines by teaching knowledge of self and the science of life to those who have yet to be mentally born.23

In other words, through righteous living, earths not only reflect the knowledge they receive from gods, but also act as representatives of the Nation, teaching those without knowledge of self. This is considered a mighty responsibility. Although most extrafamilial mentoring takes place on an informal basis, a number of publications exist (or have existed) for this purpose. A recent addition to publications by and about earths is Divine Wisdom, an electronic publication begun in 2007 by Virginia-based Beautiful Asiatic Earth. The advice in Divine Wisdom is practical. In the first issue (January 2007), Beautiful Asiatic Earth and her contributors give relationship advice and counsel earths to take time for themselves as individuals. Earths are encouraged to carefully analyze their own motivations in choices of mates and sexual partners. In an essay titled ‘‘Black Woman Get Your Mind Right,’’ Beautiful Asiatic Earth expresses her dismay that earths put up with low standards in their men: ‘‘Understand black women that A MAN IS NOT THE ANSWER TO OUR LACK OF LOVE, IMMENSE FEELINGS OF LONELINESS, LOW SELF ESTEEM, OR FEAR OF BEING ALONE, THE ANSWER IS IN OURSELVES.’’24 Her advice again cautions us to question the typical view of the NGE as a strict patriarchy. Throughout this publication earths are not presented as submissive reflections of their gods. They are instead encouraged to proactively choose appropriate mates. Nevertheless, she continues, the lessons should be the basis of all relationships and self-refinement: ‘‘It is possible to find not only ourselves but also a proper mate by utilizing mathematics and the lessons to both improve and unify your mind and body.’’25 Gods also contribute to this publication. Their essays celebrate the beauty and righteous attributes of original women. Earths also reach out to mentor the community at large through businesses and nonprofit organizations. I Medina Peaceful Earth, for example, is the Project Coordinator for an after-school program in Pittsburgh. And Mecca Islam co-founded the Urban Youth Empowerment Foundation, a nonprofit organization that utilizes hip-hop as a tool to reach and empower at-risk youth

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in Los Angeles. Both forums give these earths opportunities to mentor youths beyond their immediate family ciphers. These are only two examples, to be sure, but they point to a larger truth: earths may find creative, sufficient ways to make their voices heard outside of the home and Nation.

CONCLUSION Although the founders of the Nation of Gods and Earths had an earlier affiliation with the Nation of Islam, they seceded and crafted principles and life styles that have given them distinction from the strident patriarchy and sexism of the NOI. Despite the acknowledged ‘‘scriptural’’ authority for men as teachers and leaders, requirements of daily life necessitate that individual couples and families interpret teachings and practices to suit their own needs and interests. Thus opportunities arise for women to cultivate self-identity and play mentoring roles for children and other women at home and in the larger community. The gods and earths I interviewed unanimously and emphatically agreed that earths have sufficient voice within the NGE. As the Nation enters its fifth decade, earths have begun to organize at the local and regional level in order to support each other and strengthen their identity as earths. During the weekend of the 2007 ‘‘Show and Prove,’’ for example, an earth’s conference for women who had been active in the NGE for 10 to 24 years was held close to the Harriet Tubman school. The earths gathered to strengthen their own bonds and to facilitate elder earths passing on knowledge to younger earths, some of whom have been raised in this way of life. Earths are passionate about their beliefs and lifestyle. Many come to the Nation after years of searching and embrace the NGE’s culture, structure, and mathematics wholeheartedly. As Ma’at Sincere Earth declared, ‘‘We are strong women . . . we are not being deprived, we don’t have low self-esteem. We chose this for our life and we stay strong with it.’’ They do not consider themselves oppressed or restricted. Instead, they embrace their roles with joy. As Irize Refined Earth put it, ‘‘To exist . . . and acknowledge yourself as Earth is probably the highest form of respect you can pay to yourself.’’ Most importantly, these women feel beloved, protected, and respected. Or, again in Irize Refined Earth’s words, ‘‘The woman is never forgotten in this culture, and that’s the best thing about it.’’

NOTES I wish to thank the following gods and earths for sharing their wisdom and time with me as I composed this chapter: Eboni Joy Asiatic Earth, Irize Refined

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Earth, Ma’at Sincere Earth, Mecca Islam, Naila Mattison-Jones, Smas Born Earth, Victorious Lanasia Earth, Allah B, Life Allah, Divine Ruler Equality Allah, and C’BS Alife Allah. 1. Wakeel Allah, In the Name of Allah: A History of Clarence 13X and the Five Percenters (Atlanta: A-Team Publishing, 2007), 133–34. 2. Allah Victorious, Yahoo newsgroup, May 3, 2007. 3. I Medina Peaceful Earth, ‘‘Refined and Fly,’’ available at http:// imedinapeaceful.blogspot.com/. 4. ‘‘Nation of Gods and Earths FAQ,’’ Mentor Youth Street Academy, available at http://mentoryouthstreetacademy.com/default.aspx. 5. I Majestic Allah, ‘‘Is the Nation of Gods and Earths a Muslim Community?,’’ in The Black God: An Anthology of Truth, edited by Supreme Understanding Allah (unpublished, 2000), 44. 6. Shabazz Adew Allah, ‘‘What is an Earth?’’, in The Black God: An Anthology of Truth, edited by Supreme Understanding Allah (unpublished, 2000), 20. 7. Elvin Hatch, ‘‘Culture,’’ in The Oxford Companion to Archeology, ed. Brian M. Fagan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), available at http://www .oxfordreference.com/views/ ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t136.e0106 (accessed June 14, 2007). 8. I Majestic Allah, ‘‘Is the Nation of Gods and Earths,’’ 45. 9. Eboni Joy Asiatic Earth, ‘‘To Be or Born the Earth,’’ in The Black God: An Anthology of Truth, edited by Supreme Understanding Allah (unpublished, 2000), 21. 10. Wakeel Allah, In the Name of Allah, 141-42; italics in original. 11. Eboni Joy Asiatic Earth, ‘‘To Be or Born the Earth,’’ 20. 12. C’BS ALife Allah, ‘‘Her Fullest Ecology: Environmental Racism, the Black Woman and Why by Elevating One You Elevate the Other’’ (unpublished manuscript, n.d.), 1. 13. Ibid., 4. 14. Carol Ochs, Behind the Sex of God: Toward a New Consciousness Transcending Matriarchy and Patriarchy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1977), 47. 15. Shabazz Adew Allah, ‘‘What is an Earth?,’’ 20. 16. C’BS Alife Allah, ‘‘Regal Garments: Purdah and its Various Manifestations amongst Women of Different Cultures, Religions and Ethnic Groups Worldwide in a Historical and Contemporary Context’’ (unpublished manuscript, n.d.), 5. 17. I Medina Peaceful Earth, ‘‘Refined and Fly.’’ 18. Born Justice Allah, ‘‘The Wealth of an Earth,’’ Divine Wisdom 1, No. 1 (January 1997): 6, available at http://www.bazzworks.com/an/divinewisdom 0107.pdf (accessed May 14, 2007). 19. Ibid. 20. Quoted in Wakeel Allah, In the Name of Allah, 142. 21. Born Justice Allah, ‘‘The Wealth of an Earth,’’ 6.

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22. Eboni Joy Asiatic Earth, ‘‘To Be or Born the Earth,’’ 21. 23. Ibid. 24. Beautiful Asiatic Earth, ‘‘Black Woman Get Your Mind Right.’’ Divine Wisdom 1, No. 1 (January 1997): 1, available at http://www.bazzworks.com/an/ divinewisdom0107.pdf (accessed May 14, 2007); all caps in original. 25. Ibid.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Allah, Beloved. ‘‘The Bomb: The Greatest Story Never Told.’’ The Word 1, No. 1 (July 1987); 1, No. 3 (August/September 1987); and 1, No. 4 (October/ November 1987). Allah, Born Justice. ‘‘The Wealth of an Earth.’’ Divine Wisdom 1, No. 1 (January 1997): 6. Available at http://www.bazzworks.com/an/divinewisdom0107. pdf.. Accessed May 14, 2007. Allah, C’BS ALife. ‘‘Her Fullest Ecology: Environmental Racism, the Black Woman and Why by Elevating One You Elevate the Other.’’ Unpublished manuscript, n.d.. . ‘‘Regal Garments: Purdah and its Various Manifestations amongst Women of Different Cultures, Religions and Ethnic Groups Worldwide in a Historical and Contemporary Context.’’ Unpublished manuscript, n.d. Allah, I Majestic. ‘‘Is the Nation of Gods and Earths a Muslim Community?’’ In The Black God: An Anthology of Truth, edited by Supreme Understanding Allah, 44–45. Unpublished paper, 2000. Allah, Shabazz Adew. ‘‘What is an Earth?’’ In The Black God: An Anthology of Truth, edited by Supreme Understanding Allah, 20. Unpublished paper, 2000. Allah, Wakeel. In the Name of Allah: A History of Clarence 13X and the Five Percenters. Atlanta: A-Team Publishing, 2007. Earth, Beautiful Asiatic. ‘‘Black Woman Get Your Mind Right.’’ Divine Wisdom 1, No. 1 (January 1997): 1–2. Available at http://www.bazzworks.com/an/ divinewisdom0107.pdf. Accessed May 14, 2007. Earth, Eboni Joy Asiatic. ‘‘To Be or Born the Earth.’’ In The Black God: An Anthology of Truth, edited by Supreme Understanding Allah, 20–22. Unpublished paper, 2000. Gardell, Mattias. Countdown to Armageddon: Louis Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam. London: Hurst and Company, 1996. Gottehrer, Barry. The Mayor’s Man: One Man’s Struggle to Save Our Cities. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1975. Hatch, Elvin. ‘‘Culture.’’ In The Oxford Companion to Archeology, edited by Brian M. Fagan. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Available at http://www

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.oxfordreference.com/views/ ENTRY.html?subview=Main&entry=t136 .e0106. Accessed June 14, 2007. Miyakawa, Felicia M. ‘‘ ‘The Duty of the Civilized Is to Civilize the Uncivilized’: Tropes of Black Nationalism in the Messages of Five Percent Rappers.’’ In Understanding African American Rhetoric: Classical Origins to Contemporary Innovations, eds. Ronald Jackson and Elaine Richardson, 171–85. New York: Routledge, 2003. . ‘‘God Hop: The Music and Message of Five Percenter Rap.’’ PhD diss., Indiana University, 2003. . Five Percenter Rap: God Hop’s Music, Message, and Black Muslim Mission. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 2005. Muhammad, Elijah [Elijah Poole]. Message to the Blackman in America. Chicago: Muhammad Mosque of Islam No. 2, 1965. . ‘‘The Supreme Wisdom: Solution to the So-called NEGROES’ Problem.’’ The National Newport News and Commentator, 1957. Nuruddin, Yusef. ‘‘The Five Percenters: A Teenage Nation of Gods and Earths.’’ In Muslim Communities in North America, eds. Yvonne Yazbeck Haddad and Jane Idleman Smith, 109–32. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. Ochs, Carol. Behind the Sex of God: Toward a New Consciousness Transcending Matriarchy and Patriarchy. Boston: Beacon Press, 1977. Parks, Gregory. Freedom, Justice, and Equality: The Teachings of the Nation of Islam. Hampton, VA: United Brothers and United Sisters Communications Systems, 1992. Prince-A-Cuba. ’’Black Gods of the Inner City.’’ Gnosis (Fall 1992): 56–63. . Our Mecca is Harlem: Clarence 13X (Allah) and the Five Percent. Hampton, VA: U.B. and U.S. Communication Systems, 1995.

WEB SITES AND BLOGS C’BS Alife Allah. ‘‘The Journal of Allah’s Five Percent.’’ Available at http://www .allahsfivepercent.blogspot.com/. I Medina Peaceful Earth, ‘‘Refined and Fly.’’ Available at http://imedinapeaceful .blogspot.com/. The Nation of Islam. Available at http://www.noi.org/. Mentor Youth Street Academy. Available at http://mentoryouthstreetacademy .com/default.aspx. Original Thought. Available at http://www.originalthoughtmag.com/mag/ index.php.

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INTERVIEWS Allah B. Phone interview with author, June 25, 2007. Eboni Joy Asiatic Earth. Interview with author, June 9, 2007. Newark, NJ. Irize Refined Earth. Interview with author, June 9, 2007. Newark, NJ. Ma’at Sincere Earth. Interview with author, June 9, 2007. Newark, NJ. Mecca Islam. Interview with author, June 9, 2007. Newark, NJ. Naila Mattison-Jones. Interview with author, June 9, 2007. Newark, NJ. Smas Born Earth. Interview with author, June 9, 2007. Newark, NJ. Victorious Lanasia Earth. Interview with author, June 9, 2007. Newark, NJ.

P ART II

Socioeconomics, Politics, and Authority

CHAPTER

3

The Living Shrine: Life and Meaning in Oyotunji Yeyefini Efunbolade

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he purpose for chronicling these events in my life is to highlight my role as a spiritual practitioner and to voice my experiences as a Panamanian who was christened in the Anglican Church, raised in the Church of God, and ordained 38 years ago as an Ifa (Yoruba) priest and practitioner of African traditional spirituality and healing. My aim is to share my unique story that is international in scope and steeped in spirituality that evolved principally out of my life and ‘‘education’’ in the Oyotunji African Village of Sheldon, South Carolina. The village was founded on the principles of Yoruba traditional religion and culture by a dedicated group of African Americans, but principally by Oba Oseijeman Efuntola Adefunmi I. As always illumination comes to me through the spirit world, through the voices, faces, dreams and visions from the ancestral realm, convincing me that I should share my story. I have had four dreams about my mentor, teacher, and the greatest influence of my life—Oba Oseijeman Efuntola Adefunmi I. These dreams convinced me to share this story publicly. In each of these dreams I was in one capacity or another helping the Oba (a Yoruba word for king), assisting him and supporting him as king. In the last dream he was delivering a speech and his teeth fell out of his mouth and fell to the ground, breaking into two parts. I carefully picked up the dentures, wrapped them in a napkin, gave them back to him, and told him that he should not continue with the presentation. After the dream with

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the teeth I figured it was time for me to let go of this excerpt from the booklength narrative that I have been writing for more than 12 years.1 Before submitting the final draft of this chapter, I decided to elevate the Oba’s spirit to aide me in this release of guarded information. Spiritual elevation for a nine-day period is a practice used in many indigenous cultures; however, the one I use is derived from Santeria. For nine days a candle, water, a picture of the deceased, and flowers are displayed, and a prayer is recited daily to allow and assist the deceased to find clarity in their transition to the ancestral world. By assisting the spirit we are actually helping ourselves because at the end of the nine days, the spirit/energy of the deceased can assist us in the physical world. They become our friends and supporters. I write this chapter from the vantage point of a participant-observer who spent many years in Oyotunji—basing it on my priestly values as Iyanifa and on my experiences as a wife of the Oba. I was born on August 31, 1947, in Panama City, Republic of Panama to parents of Afro-Barbadian and Jamaican ancestry. Being born in Panama was seemingly predestined for me, laying the foundation of my life’s journey. Details of my African ancestry were revealed to me when I got a reading or divination after I was an initiated priestess. In that reading, I was directed to engage in a ritualized meditation in front of an ancestral shrine with a lighted candle and water. Through the subsequent spirit possession, the narrative of my ancestry was revealed, giving me a vision of the capture of a male chief priest and two of his granddaughters by slave catchers. Living along the coast of West Africa, they burned into their flesh the mark and medicine signifying their destiny as diviners—spiritual advisers and healers—on the eve before their capture. During his defense against the captors, the chief priest was killed. After arriving in Jamaica, the younger of the two granddaughters agreed that she would free herself from the physical world and go back in spirit to her homeland. From that netherworld, she wanted to guide her sister and descendants in their work as teachers, seers, and healers. According to family legend one of those descendants was my maternal grandmother (Ida Ruddock), a teacher in Westmoreland Parish. My grandmother migrated to Panama during the building of the canal, where she met my grandfather, Calib Aiken and gave birth to my mother. My being born in Panama was fortuitous. Growing up in Panama gave me fluency in Spanish, exposed me to racial discrimination based on my African ancestry—despite my European name (Rhona Mercedes Roach)— and an opportunity to observe ritual and ceremony in an Afro-spiritual temple under the leadership of a woman. As a child, I disliked my name— acquired from a novel that my mother was reading during her pregnancy. This surname made me the butt of a joke that a first-grade boy told in

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Spanish about ‘‘runner roach.’’ From that day, I felt shackled by my name and wanted to be free of the bondage it represented, especially of the ‘‘roach’’ part. However, this was only one of the reasons I felt devalued. While growing up in Panama, neither the legacy of my African ancestors nor the value of Africans who built the Panama Canal was taught in schools. I was taught that black people were ‘‘Chombo,’’ which in today’s translation means ‘‘nigger.’’ No matter what our oral legacy was, our family had no real value or worth in the grand scheme of modern or ancient history. The word ‘‘Chombo’’ signified shame and social alienation that was associated with my dark complexion. If I adhered to social expectations, I would marry a Spanish man and have biracial children to lighten up the family line. For as long as I can remember, my intention in life was to change my name and acquire a new identity. In 1959, the seeds for change in my future were sown, after my parents were divorced and my mother’s work as supervisor in the Domestics Department at Hotel El Panama earned her an invitation to become a maid for a family in New York. Upon her departure, my mother placed us in care of friends, promising to return to bring us to America with her. This new living arrangement paved the way for me to be introduced to an Afro-Caribbean religion. The glum and chiding woman, Sister Daisy, with whom my sister and I stayed, lived next door to an Afro-spiritual Benjinite Church.2 I loved nearly everything about that place. The members worshipped in a way that made me feel at home in my mind, my body, and my spirit. This church was the antithesis of the Church of God, where I was bored, disconnected, and distracted. They used Florida water that smelled like blossoms, and placed fresh flowers about the room. They served food— fruits and sometimes roasts of animals—on a long table covered in white. Their presence was accented by their dress in long colorful robes and head wraps. The songs, chants, and possession dances connected with me in a profound way. Even as I write, I can smell the aromas and see the people dancing and becoming possessed with what I now know as the spirit of the ancestors and God. The most impressive fact about Benjinite Church for me was that the leader was a woman. She seemed to be highly respected. Some people, who came fleetingly but not for the regular services, seemed to be rich because they had automobiles and expensive-looking clothes. I enjoyed watching the temple services on Sunday nights when the music, the dance, and the aromas of flowers and food lifted my spirit. The gathering sang way into the night and closed out the rituals with a sermon that was accompanied with murmuring, crying, and consoling; the service ended with a feast. Though their songs began in English, they usually ended in a frenzy of languages that was neither Spanish nor English, but an unknown tongue.

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Despite Sister Daisy’s caution that I should neither eat anything from them nor go into the yard, the church lured me. Unlike Sister Daisy, the Benjinite leader seemed to embrace me. I longed to sneak over to the church as I lay in my bed, praying that my mother would send for me. Although there were diverse Afro-communities surrounding us, life in Panama had disconnected me from my African roots in Jamaica and West Africa. The Benjinite Church, however, represented a harbinger of things to come. My prayers eventually paid off. In 1961 at the height of the Civil Rights Movement in the United States, mother sent for us to come to Brooklyn to live on Bushwick Avenue. I loved my American school because we went on field trips, riding on buses to places that seemed to be far away from Bushwick Avenue. On one of these field trips, we went to the 1964 New York World’s Fair, and it reawakened me to African culture. During this excursion, I was so excited because we had to write a paper on what we liked or experienced that day. I knew there were rides and food and all types of fun things that dealt with what I considered social—not academic endeavors. We went to several exhibits, but I did not write my paper about the one that changed my life— the ‘‘Africa Exposition.’’ There were all types of things about Africa—arts, crafts, foods, and native attire. There were drummers and dancers. At first I was just enjoying the music, and then I began to feel light and good, at home, at peace. Suddenly I started shaking and could not stop. My teachers, schoolmates, and even the drummers and dancers were looking at me. Some looked with concern, while others laughingly ridiculed me. One of the musicians came over and said that I was feeling the presence of my ancestors and should not to be afraid. I was not only afraid, but also embarrassed because whatever was going on did not seem to be cool with my teachers and classmates. After this incident I started looking up things about Africa in the school library. None of what I read made me feel like I wanted to relate to Africa. Instead, pictures and descriptions of African peoples and cultures looked so negative and degrading that to identify with them made me feel more ‘‘Chomba’’ and Negro. This was during the 1960s, when the emerging Black activism was getting lots of media attention. Congressman Adam Clayton Powell of Harlem stirred controversy when he began to wear dashikis and encourage blacks to rethink and reclaim their identity by relating to Africa. This was right after Ghana, followed by Nigeria, had gotten independence from Great Britain. Powell said that blacks could not depend on America’s traditional leaders and institutions to solve black problems. He said that we must depend only on ourselves. I was in a cultural tailspin when I heard about a place called the Schomburg Library. I began going there to investigate Africa and the Diaspora. The Arthur Schomburg Library (a branch of the New York

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City Public Library System) was a small place with a lot of big books on Afro- culture, history, art, and music that I found profoundly interesting. I began to value reading, and I read and began to buy books on art. I started wearing clothes that reflected my growing identity with my African roots. My mother tried to dissuade me of this identity and urged me to attend college. To please her I enrolled in college in 1967, choosing North Carolina A & T State University in Greensboro, North Carolina. Intending to major in art education and minor in foreign languages, I instead joined the Black Cultural Nationalist and Black Studies Movements that were developing on campus. These organizations were bursting at the seams with leaders like Leroi Jones (a poet who by 1969 was known as Imamu Amiri Baraka). From New Jersey, Baraka united with others in Pan-African cultural ceremonies and a philosophy to call for black unity during the 1960s sentiment that was sweeping the nation.3 Despite the dismay of my mother, I pursued my personal interest in black nationalist activities, assisted in the development of a two-room art gallery called ‘‘Afro House,’’ participated in marches against white restaurants near campus, and wore Afro- hairstyles and clothes. I complained to my mother that too few students were supporting these social and political efforts, whereupon she reminded me that as a Panamanian, I did not have to get myself involved in this African thing because I was not born in Africa. Her admonition was a little too late. During one of the homecomings, I met and became friends with performers called ‘‘The Last Poets’’ (one of the popular spoken-word groups consisting of African Americans and Afro-Latinos) who told me about a community of African American Yorubas in New York City. My new friends were Abiodun (a vocalist) and Baba Femi (a percussionist). Their stories about that community fascinated me, and I credit them with having spoken to the muted stirrings of my soul when they told me about the Yorubas. My friends and I invited the ‘‘Poets’’ to perform at A&T, and we hosted them throughout the weekend of their visit. In one of our rap sessions, Baba Femi and Abiodun (who were inseparable) encouraged me to get a spiritual reading from a priest called Baba Serge. Upon learning that Baba Serge (referred to in my introduction as Oba Oseijeman) had left New York to start an African village in the South, Baba Femi and Abiodun told me that I should go to Mama Keke—a Yoruba priestess—for a reading. The reading (called an Ifa divination by the Yorubas) profoundly moved me because it addressed notions that were deeply seated within my soul and that would tie me to the Yoruba religion. I began to identify with this woman from Barbados as a messenger sent to me by divine forces to speak what I needed to know in a soft and spiritual manner. The reading reminded me of the spiritual kinship that I had felt for the Benjinite leader.

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During every semester break and other official holiday leaves from the university, I went to help Mama Keke at her Moremi Book Store and African Market in New York City, knowing that I also would get a reading and prescribed rituals. During those sessions, she said that she was preparing me to become a priestess in ‘‘this [Yoruba] religion.’’ At my first reading, she took a strand of Obatala sacred beads (that one would know by the colors and number) from her wall and put it around my neck. She advised me to wear it everyday, not to sleep with it, not to have sex with it, not to let anyone touch it, and not to wear it during my menstrual cycle. Most importantly on that day, she gave me what she said was my Yoruba spiritual name— Folayan, meaning to walk in dignity. Receiving that name was the needle that carried the thread that made the clothes—the spiritual identity—that I would wear for the rest of my life. A born-again 22-year-old woman, I went back to school after the Christmas break in 1969 and told everyone my Yoruba name, its meaning, and the power that it impelled within me. My new image was an affront to my mother and many of my classmates. I lost many of my friends who felt that my affinity for Yoruba culture and religion was too great a challenge to their black American identity. I gave away what I called my European clothes, washed the perm out of my hair, and wore a very large Afro-hairdo. I began wearing head ties and wrapped skirts. With a sense of newness to my life, I felt awakened, alive, driven, propelled to move forward into my quest for deeper self-awareness. I sought liberation from the feelings and thoughts that kept me trapped in a ‘‘Negro’’ world of insecurity, shame, guilt, and confusion. When the A & T administration did not approve black studies for accrediting, I quit college in 1970 as a first-semester junior and went back to Brooklyn. Upon returning, my intention was to find and link with people who were living lifestyles that reflected pride and identification with African culture. My stay at home with my mother was short-lived, since my family could not understand why I would leave school and come home to find a job and spend virtually all of my time preoccupied with Africa: reading books on Africa, visiting museums with African collections, hanging out in Afrocommunities in Harlem, and frequenting African-centered plays, bookstores, and dance productions. I did find a job, with a small African-centered daycare on Atlantic Avenue in Brooklyn. I parted with the values and traditions that had connected me with my family, as the Yoruba religion and culture linked me to a new community of family and friends. One of these relationships led to the realization of a desire I had for an entire year—the hope of having a child and growing more into my African identity. I bonded with the Yoruba community that embraced, welcomed, and nurtured me during my pregnancy. I spent the last month at the home

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of one of the staff of the child-care center, Priestess Omitinibu; to this day she is one of my dearest friends. With her, I often visited the home of Priest Orisamola Awolowo for readings and to attend spiritual bembes,gatherings in which priests/priestesses and other orisha devotees sang, danced, and drummed rhythms of the deities. During one of the bembes the priest announced that he and his family would move to South Carolina to the newly founded Oyotunji African Village. Three days after my son’s birth on April 20, 1971, the priest performed a divination and in a Yoruba traditional ceremony named him Omoladun (child of sweetness). I remember saying over and over in my mind, ‘‘My son has an African name from birth, a name that will empower him, a name with meaning, a name he will never have to be ashamed of, and I gave him this. I have honored myself; I can walk in dignity, as denoted by my Yoruba name—Folayan.’’ Throughout the pregnancy, I had set my mind on going to live in Ghana or Nigeria—away from the cauldron of American political persecution of race, at the height of Angela Davis’s trials and tribulations with the American justice system. Having no financial means to travel there, I made plans to migrate with Awolowo. On June 16 (the full number of the major Odu Ifa— verses used in Ifa divination), our group arrived at the Oyotunji African Village just outside Beaufort to become residents. The morning that we arrived was ethereal. The famous South Carolina morning fog was heavy, hanging over the road. When we rode down the path to the Oba’s house we were quiet because we felt the power of this place, this time, this moment. We could see shapes and forms moving in the thick fog, but could not see until we came closer, that the moving forms were goats, horses, pigs, chickens, and ducks. We waited in what was known as the ‘‘long house,’’ a thatched-covered building constructed for events to accommodate visitors. We smelled an aroma coming from the kitchen of the only standing large building on the property, the king’s house, where he lived with his wife Majile and their three children. (Although introduced to me as Majile, a year before I arrived she was initiated and ceremonially named Oshunbunmi to indicate that she was a priestess of the orisha Oshun.) The smell of food slowly came to our noses and our mouths watered, after not having eaten a decent meal on the long journey from New York to South Carolina. The excitement of being in the village and meeting the king, finding my house, learning the language, and raising my child, kept me busy. The Oba and Oshunbunmi came to welcome us. She came first and brought her three children (Oshunguaide, Ogunyemi, and Oduara), who bore what seemed like tons of food, and hot tea. Oshunbunmi wore a wonderful smile as she welcomed us with the Yoruba greeting, ‘‘Alafia.’’ She was beautiful and friendly, with eyes that seemed to be full of mystery and knowledge.

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Oba Oseijeman arrived shortly, and we gave him the royal curtsy by kneeling. As we stood up he gave us all welcoming hugs and told us how proud he was of us—the second group to make the pilgrimage to Oyotunji successfully. The first group had consisted of the king, his family and Omiyeye Wesihunu, a priestess of Yemonja.4 Later that morning we had the privilege of meeting this lady who was in her late sixties. To me she seemed courageous, having made the commitment to live in Oyotunji at a time when there was no running water or electricity and no paved road. As the days passed, we settled into our new home and developed deeper bonds amongst ourselves. I continued to harbor the secret longing to relocate to and be initiated as a priestess in Nigeria, where I now knew that my friend (Priestess Omitinibu) would settle. It would be many years before this hope would be fulfilled, for my sojourn in Oyotunji would be long and eventful. Readings at the shrines of the village advised me to be initiated as soon as possible so that my son (who was ailing) would heal and I would have clarity about my life. I took the small amount of money that I had and was initiated to Obatala on August 26, two and a half months after arriving in the village. Before my initiation I had to face my greatest challenge—being asked to become the second wife of the Oba. Oshunbunmi came and told me of the Oba’s request. I do not know what bewilderment showed in my countenance, but I remember thinking that I was being asked to become a concubine, a woman who slept with the Oba, but had no ceremony of marriage performed. Without a husband or family when I arrived, that community called me a ‘‘ward of the state,’’ and village elders told me that if I did not marry the Oba I would have to leave the village. I had to make the decision within 28 days after first meeting Oba or marry into someone else’s compound. This bid for me flew in the face of my secret wish to neither marry nor stay in Oyotunji. I was not in agreement with the myth, then circulating, that strong African families were male-centered in polygamy.5 The Oba had determined that I would have no alternative but to become his second wife. I did not have anywhere to go. My choices were limited because my family wanted very little to do with me after I left New York to live in this Yoruba village, and I had no contact with my son’s father. Omitinibu was on her way to Africa and my only supporting family was Godfather Orisanmola Awolowo in Oyotunji. He did not invite me to stay with his family, so I agreed to be a concubine, all along planning to leave after my initiation. Priest Awolowo conducted a marriage reading (divination) and informed me that the gods favored my becoming a wife/concubine. This was a hard decision for me to make since I had no one to consult with or to encourage me to do what I really wanted to do. Now my most practical goal was to get to know the Oba, who was 18 years older than I, and whose wife said she

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agreed with this Yoruba tradition of polygamy. I knew about the practice of polygamy and arranged marriages only from books that I had read in the Schomburg Library, not as a possibility within the United States. This was a stressful and lonely time for me. I remember talking to my young baby as I would my father or an elder in my family. To many I seemed as if I were losing contact with reality. I remember that the king tried to develop a courtship with me, as he inquired about whether I needed anything for the little hut in which I was living. Knowing that he was the source of my stress, my spirit was not comforted. Two days prior to the ‘‘marriage,’’ I sought an alternate recourse: I took my son, walked to the neighborhood grocery store, and called my mother with the intention of taking the bus back to New York. Too annoyed at me to offer to bring me home, she reminded me of how much of a disappointment I was to the family. She also said that they could rear my son and give him a home that I could not. I did not bother to ask her for the bus fare. Instead, I cried all the way back to the village, talking to my son as I carried him on my back. I had found no alternative to marrying Oba. When I got back to the village, I told Oshunbunmi that I would submit to the king’s request and go ahead with the ceremony that would make me his concubine. Two weeks following the ‘‘marriage,’’ I was initiated into the priesthood of Obatala. Upon receiving my Ita (a reading on my destiny and purpose in life), the priest told me that going to Africa was not my path at this time because I did not have any skills to offer. Therefore, I should wait, be trained in the priesthood, and then one day Africa would welcome me and bestow much honor upon me. At that moment I was angry, disappointed, and confused. The one thing that kept me going is that, during my two years of receiving readings, I had always found them to be quite accurate in discerning and articulating my innermost feelings. I complied with the situation and fell into the spirit of the initiation to Obatala, reasoning that I was making the best decision by submitting to the will of that orisha, who was calling me to his priesthood. During the first three months of my initiation I learned about the dedication and commitment that is required to be a priestess and contributing member of the village. I had no sexual relations with my husband in this period, and my entire focus was on development as a priestess and on my responsibilities to my son. He began to thrive. I also developed a deep level of respect and pride in the things I was learning about myself, as well as about the royal household—the king and his senior wife and their three children, whom I home-schooled. In time, I became fond of the Oba and Osunbunmi. I began to perceive the king’s love for African people and his commitment to and respect for African culture and traditions. He was a priestly man who depended on

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divination as a support for most of his actions. He loved children. I began to appreciate him as a kind, brilliant and very brave man. I came to know his wife as a woman who had a deep belief in her ancestors and orisha (Oshun). With the polygamist venture, they had begun a communal lifestyle that a number of the ‘‘love-generation’’ communities had adopted and that some black men were promoting as ‘‘the African way.’’ Osunbunmi’s romantic slant on African communalism was in harmony with Yoruba traditional culture. Her affection for her husband inclined her to sacrifice personal desires for the good of the whole Oyotunji movement. This time in my life was truly one of the most challenging because, along with the training in divination, history, and sociology of our tradition, I had to function as wife, mother, godmother, teacher, chief and wise elder in our community. I was, as I look back in hindsight, not knowledgeable enough about my own identity, let alone equipped to educate, inspire, and advise new members of our community. For about five years my life seemed like I was on a roller coaster. I was called upon for numerous titled positions and responsibilities in our ever-growing family. During this half decade, I had added to my responsibilities three children and quite a number of priests and priestesses that I had initiated. The king had taken four more wives, and the family was continuing to grow. I tried to distract myself by focusing my attention on my children’s development as well as on my growing clientele from the neighboring community, rather than on the stress of trying to adjust to the concept of polygamy. As I learned new priestly skills, I found deeper meaning of the experiences I was facing. Through rituals, ceremonies, and divination, I came to develop a deep love, respect, and commitment to the power of God. As I gained new responsibilities and became more enlightened about me and my commitment to God, I found myself teaching classes to the priests and priestesses of the village. I ultimately became the head of the School of Divination and Priestly Training. I even formed lasting bonds with some of my co-wives while building this community. However, I began to feel quite distant emotionally from the king on a personal level. During the time of the greatest influx of people into the village, my role as chief, queen, head of the Obatala temple, and head of the women’s market distracted me from my role as wife, which was for me merely a title. The closeness I once had with the king was dwindling away. We had many disagreements about some of the unfair treatment and expectations of women and the frustrations of the adolescent age group. Increasing numbers of new people came to the village to study and live, causing us to ponder over the ineffectiveness of some of the new rules that were being written. A large degree of my stress rose from the fact that while I was one of the wives of the king, I also was one of the elders, who was seeking advice

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and counsel on the traditions of the Yoruba people. Many times arguments erupted in the chiefs’ and queens’ meetings in which I participated, and these arguments invariably influenced my marriage. I at times sided with the king’s views, but more often than not, our views clashed, because he was out of touch with what the women deemed important. Not being involved on a daily basis with his children, he lacked the ability to see that the needs of the children were not being met. Our disagreements were about future plans, education, the mothers’ financial hardships, and their loneliness and isolation from their blood family members. His interest was more in building and creating monumental images through carving statues and painting iconic scenes. He was committed to staging the pageantry and beauty of the village so that it was visible to tourists, anthropologists, and people seeking knowledge of Yoruba traditional religion and culture. The religion that was being taught to the children was not connecting in a way that would compel them to establish a personal relationship with the orisha. They adhered to the set rituals and behavioral rules instead of the spiritual aspects of the religion. Orisha worship became more religious practice than spiritual devotion for them. The king designated that his income from guest lectures, spiritual counseling, and divining be used for building the physical structures—shrines and public buildings—of the village. His position was that the wives should financially maintain their houses that he had built for them. At the beginning of the foundation of the village almost everyone except the king relied on food subsidies from the government through the food stamp program. Any group that is beginning something needs a financial base. We didn’t have financial support from the temple in New York or our parents, those most likely to care about our welfare. In the fifth year (1976), the village grew to 250 residents, including children. Oyotunji was at its zenith. We were a bustling community that had all of the challenges of a small metropolis. Though we did not have running water or electricity, we were expanding greatly with new residents. Additionally, the palace (Aafin in Yoruba) was a unit that needed guidelines to mediate interactions within the family. Nineteenth-century Yoruba traditions formed the base of rules for the family and the larger village. At that time the Oba had a number of wives and children. All adults in the village were aiming to become priests and priestesses. While the community grew to its pinnacle, as a priestess and queen, I was able to observe and appreciate the power of women whenever we organized for a particular effort. Not having running water or electricity in the early days of the village pressed the women to bond together for survival. Wood had to be gathered daily and a stash was needed for rainy weather, so we worked and sometimes even cooked our meals together. We also

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participated in communal ceremonies and rituals, hoping to foster harmony within the community. Except for priestly obligations, women outside the palace generally shaped their daily lives to suit themselves, their husbands, and family members. Most of them came from urban areas and were not accustomed to rural, even crude, conditions that confronted villagers. Mornings for nonroyal wives were much like those of palace wives. All of us had to make sure that we planned ahead to get wood and cook food for our families, and we had to do the laundry and complete other responsibilities associated with being a wife and mother. The daily routine became more arduous for his wives as the Oba added to his retinue. When our polygamy expanded to incorporate seven women, many of the queens became village chiefs and shrine attendants with responsibilities for spiritual and political upkeep. At times there were women who came to the village and were unhappy in their marriages, but there also were some who came as single women looking for marriage and children. In some cases I encouraged them to try to strengthen their commitment to their marriages and find spiritual assistance through counsel or rituals, and for some this was successful, while for others it was not. Upon divorce or dissolution of their partnered relationships, the women were expected to become members of another family or the royal family. Occasionally, I was led to personally encourage women to marry the king, because I saw the potential for them to have the support to develop their personal interests, and their children became members of our family. In retrospect it was under my spiritual guardianship as their godmother that they became chief priests and senior priests and women of title. They were members of the Ogboni Society—the village parliament. Some nonroyal women also were chiefs, but they worked under the guidance of representatives from the palace. These female chiefs spent many hours in meetings, discussing ways to resolve problems, or planning for the development and maintenance of infrastructure and new cultural projects. Political and social authority gave women leaders access to the public and increased their opportunities to develop livelihoods beyond priestly functions. Sometimes this access came via the media , such as my performances in the Roots video documentary in 1977. As a priestess of Obatala and wife of the Oba, my responsibilities afforded me a close relationship with the king, in as much as I was chief priestess in the village. In the early years of Oyotunji the chief priest of Obatala, Orishamola Awolowo, was in charge of the personal Obatala shrine of the king, which also served as the village’s Obatala shrine. As we progressed and grew, the king erected a separate Obatala shrine for the needs of the town, with Orishamola Awolowo as chief priest. I then took care of the

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King’s personal Obatala shrine in the palace for many years during this transition and so bore the title of Iyashanla and was chief priestess. As chief priestess, my daily responsibility was to be the first person to get water from the pump before anyone else disturbed the water. I also poured the libation, prayed, and cooked offerings for the shrine while taking care of my three children. Along with the daily maintenance of the shrine, every Sunday I was required to be present for the gathering of chiefs at the reading that forecast ways in which the week would unfold. In preparation for the annual celebration of Obatala, I collaborated with the chief priest to plan a three-day festival. During that event, we depicted the life of Obatala through plays, ceremonies, and celebrations. This festival coincided with my ordination anniversary, as well as with the founding of Oyotunji and the annual celebration of the Oba’s ordination. I had a sacred and interactive relationship with the king’s Obatala, and I related to this orisha as my father. Thus in my capacity as chief priestess, I was obliged to render this annual priestly service for the entire village; herein lay the differences between me and other priestesses. The other town priestesses had similar responsibilities but did not have such presence at a major annual celebration. Marriage to Oba and initiation to Obatala placed me in a position of privilege, responsibility, and loneliness—the perch from which I observed the relational dynamics within the polygamous family. If a wife was not grounded in her own spiritual power, she could really get herself sidetracked by getting caught up in situations that were emotion-filled and could lead to despondency. About 30 percent of the wives’ time was consumed by some type of intrafamily squabble. As with most members in families that live in close proximity, there was need for constant readjustment among the relations. New people frequently were coming into the family, whether via birth or Oba’s new spousal acquisitions. The royal wives were involved with their individual responsibilities associated with moneymaking ventures—sometimes priesthood related—and with professional careers. Bickering spilled over into the competition that occurred when one wife cornered the market on an opportunity that another had been eyeing. Efforts to create a thriving family economy proved to be grueling. Commitment to building Oyotunji was the principal factor that sustained the polygamous lifestyle at the village. When I came to Oyotunji the king was in a monogamous relationship; he was the husband of one wife and father of three children with one in utero. He was dedicated, committed, and passionate about the restoration of African spiritual systems in the United States. He was ambitious, a visionary and a mobilizer. He worked hard at physical and spiritual endeavors that he hoped would make Oyotunji a reality. When I became a wife, the practice of polygamy was instigated, and over the years I saw gradual change overtake this man.

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I am not certain of the rationale that was used for practicing polygamy at Oyotunji during the 1970s, for that was a time of diverse social experimentation in various sectors of the United States. Polygamy had a centuries-old history within Yoruba culture and often has been linked by scholars to needs of labor-intensive agrarianism, extending lineage relationships, incursions of an Islamic marital practice, but also to mythic lifestyles among the orishas in Yoruba traditional religion. Whatever its origins, myths about lifestyles of the orishas would have allowed the practice to be thought of as consistent with Yoruba religion and culture at Oyotunji. Books that the Oba likely consulted during the early 1970s documented the deep roots of the practice among Nigerians generally, as well as among Ifa priests and other orisha devotees.6 A more practical consideration for its adoption in Oyotunji is that polygamy met a social need in the community, serving to give the women—who outnumbered the males—husbands. The shortcoming of polygamy in Oyotunji was that there were not ample examples of successful polygamist relationships available to illustrate how such partnerships could thrive. There was no generation of elders who preceded us in this experiment. We were learning in the midst of doing, and we did not often take time to reflect on and modify polygamy as an institution in an African American village. By the 1980s, the royal family stopped depending on the food stamp program. Having a communally oriented economy might have contributed to this financial progress. The first nine years were devoted to developing our priesthood, and income-producing businesses were created such as a dance troupe, a department of tourism, and a department of education for the children and for support of the priesthood. Nevertheless, arguments and grumbling ensued between the king and his wives, primarily over finances. The friction was obvious when the wives pressed the Oba for needed structural maintenance of their houses. He did not seem to understand that having too many wives and paying too little attention to the details of maintaining the physical structures of their houses was the root of the arguments, which sometimes led to divorce. When there were enough male workers around for building construction and grounds maintenance, there was less conflict. In the West there is a popular notion that polygamy is a system where a man is leading a bunch of foolish women. On the contrary, I think that polygamy is a system sustained by the brilliance and ingenuity of African women who are willing to maintain their respective households and children while uniting for a common purpose. Traditionally we lived an agrarian lifestyle in Oyotunji, and we needed strong, independent women to help maintain and sustain the village, while the men built, protected, and maintained the safety of the village.

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Spiritually and emotionally many of the wives possessed the self-love and confidence that helped us to develop emotionally and work as sisters. Through my participation, I gained friendship in this close-knit group. Many times we united and opposed our husband. Our unity portrayed cohesiveness and camaraderie rather than the disharmony and powerlessness that went along with the Western notion of polygamy. The practice of polygamy gave me a sense of team play and understanding of family ties. All of us wives were initiated priestesses, driving towards the same goal of building family and a Yoruba community, and our destinies in this regard were clearly defined. We drew strength from ritual ceremonies and the passion for the restoration of the culture and traditions of the Yoruba people. Our respective roles within the community were encouraged, and we constructed new programs and activities for the development of the village. The advancement of the village reigned supreme, and initiators of development were highly respected. Wives of the Oba maintained the polygamous household in spite of our jealousies and frustrations. We had aspirations that reminded us to focus on reclaiming Yoruba traditional religion and culture as a positive model for African Americans. Our desire was to model pride in Yoruba traditions, hard work, unity, cooperation, and empowerment. All of us were committed to the mission of reclaiming Yoruba religion and culture. We wanted to situate it in a village in the South as a hedge against competitive individualism within capitalism and its cohort, white supremacy, as a model for black America. Personalities along with occupational interests of women in the village varied. Because an array of programmatic designs and organizations was needed in the fledgling village, and there were few people available for such development, women felt empowered to take up tasks that most interested them as individuals. A woman whose major interest was commercially oriented, for example, became the head of the tourist department. A woman interested in the priesthood became chief priest with skills in healing and divining. Women interested in education became teachers for the Yoruba academy. Women with a knack for domestic chores cultivated a garden to provide products for cooking and selling. Being a keen observer, the Oba discerned that ambitious wives in pursuit of individual success lessened their focus on and emotional attachment to him. Polygamy was a tolerated system in Oyotunji, which was undeveloped and agrarian—an environment where there was much physical hardship, requiring labor-intensive toil. At times some of the wives felt that they needed each other to keep the extended family and village running smoothly. Polygamy allowed the women in the village to multitask, while developing the social, spiritual, and political aspects of their lives. A woman could gather

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wood, cook, wash clothing, run a household, and participate in the social and political arenas of the community with the help of her co-wives. I conclude that the Oba did not maintain polygamy. Nevertheless, his vision and his dedication to difficult and grinding physical labor inspired villagers to support him in fulfilling his dream. Inspiration from him persuaded wives and other villagers to help him develop a two-bedroom farmhouse into a bustling village. The purpose of the village was to offer an alternative for African Americans—who had lost knowledge of Africa—so as to help them reclaim African traditions, especially the Yoruba traditional religion and culture. Through our own hands we were able to build a ‘‘nation’’ that still stands on 11 acres of land. Although I was never a staunch supporter of polygamy, I eventually accepted it for the value it held for me. However, I reached a crossroad in my life, starting with the birth of my daughter. The Oba was taking a new wife, and despite my request, he failed to postpone the ceremony until after my daughter’s scheduled delivery by C-section. I felt this was an inconsiderate act since the date of the surgery was prearranged. I divorced the king in my heart and concentrated on rearing my children. I started to see myself leaving the village. As a result, I began to cater more to requests from my clients outside Oyotunji for dance performances, roles in movies, teaching classes on priestly knowledge and skills, and providing divinations and preparing new priests and priestesses. I developed an extensive network beyond the reaches of Oyotunji proper. After all three of my children were in school, I traveled even more extensively. I acquired clients and students in other cities, and in my travels I realized that I had people who supported my work and depended on me for spiritual counsel. I was able to leave my children with other wives while I dedicated time and effort towards building my career as a healer. Through my travels I was able to financially support myself in a way that was better than ever before. I purchased a car and was often able to take my children on extended weekend holidays. I took them to visit grandparents and other family members, and sometimes I even took them with meto work. My life started to pull me in a different direction. The focus of my work shifted towards using my skills to help others outside of Oyotunji. I began going on trips, sometimes for a week at a time. As my finances improved, I was able to give my children and myself more domestic comfort. I enlarged my house and purchased bicycles, toys, and games unlike what any of the other children had. I realized that the tools I received, the training I acquired, and the experience I gained as a chief priest/priestess—and mother—gave me the avenue on which to travel and fulfill my dream of one day leaving Oyotunji and traveling to Africa and places all around the world.

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As I traveled, I began to have a different perspective on the meaning of happiness and joy. I began to question many of the decisions, rules, and laws that had dominated my life at Oyotunji. When my middle daughter became 11 years old, I had the biggest and clearest revelation about my departure from the village. This revelation evolved out of the Oba’s pronouncement that he had prearranged our daughter’s marriage to a man who was much older than she. I argued for days with the Oba on his decree that my daughter would be engaged to a man that she did not love and that she would marry him by the time that she was 16. Despite my opposition, he mandated that she was to be engaged to this man. I agreed outwardly, as I began to make preparation for leaving the village by the end of the year. During that year, I began to train as a medium with the late Juan Candela (a well-known priest of Chango and master drummer who emigrated from Matanzas, Cuba to New York in the 1960s) and became convinced that my life’s purpose was beyond Oyotunji. Throughout this period of study, my children were thriving, but they began to show signs of needing education and emotional stimulation beyond the confines of Oyotunji. With the support of many of my clients in North Carolina, I moved to Charlotte in 1986—exactly 15 years after going to Oyotunji, which was the road that I needed to take in preparation for life outside the village. Moving from Oyotunji was monumental, because I was able to give my children an opportunity to blossom, and at the same time, build new and lasting friendships that are still in place today. When we first moved to Charlotte, I was quite afraid of failing and making the Oba’s negative predictions come true. He and his supporters were angry that I left the village. I now understand that the source of their displeasure was over my departure and their not being able to rely on me to fulfill my old responsibilities upon which they depended. I became persona non grata, feeling that I actually had fallen from grace because of the sanctions placed by Oba and his chiefs against our children and me—we could not visit the village and old acquaintances. Many times I sought advice, ceremonies, and counsel from priests in Atlanta, New York City, and Nigeria in order to keep the strength required to build a future for my children and me. Adjusting to life in Charlotte’s inner city presented many challenges for us. We faced such financial difficulties that I doubted if I would be able to feed and clothe my children in this new lifestyle. One night I had a psychological breakdown and began banging my head against the wall, distraught that ase (the notion of having divine power adequate for accomplishing difficult goals) was eluding me. I feared that I would disappoint friends and allies by failing to house and clothe my children adequately. Confronted by the faces of my three children, who were frightened and alarmed, I determined that I could not let them down. I swallowed my pride and called my mother

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to ask her for financial assistance. She helped me to purchase a home and move out of the challenging neighborhood. That move marked the day that the children and I came to an unstated truth and reality: We would all work together, look out for each other, do the best that we could, and leave no room for failure. I am so very proud of my birth son and two daughters. They are all parents with college degrees and other professional accomplishments. My children never gave me any of the typical teenage challenges that sometimes come with teen-love and peer pressure. They kept their grade point averages very high and completed university studies in Washington, Columbus, Winston-Salem, and High Point. Today, I relate to Oyotunji as the home of my children and as the foundation of my spiritual relationship with Ifa and other orishas. It is the crucible in which I learned to be aligned with my destiny. By realizing that the pursuit of destiny often takes one onto meandering roads, I now know that the Oyotunji village was one point of passage along my lifetime journey. It is now a valued, memorable locus of accomplishment that is always in my heart. I returned to Oyotunji for the home going of the Oba in February 2005. It was an epiphany for me because of the many emotions running through my consciousness. As I walked around the grounds, I was revisited with memories of happier times. I saw some of the buildings displaying my artwork and saw my compound still standing after 19 years. It was a surreal experience for me. My children were caught up in dealing with their feelings about their father’s death. Overall it was a positive experience, and I was met by most with much kindness and respect in spite of the negativity surrounding my departure. Former co-wives greeted me with some ambivalence and under the burden of their grief. The celebration was more of a festival than a funeral. I reconnected with many people that I had not seen for years. We danced to Obatala (the patron orisha of the village), and the presence of the Oba overcame me. I felt inclined to sing one of his favorite chants, and waves of emotion came over the crowd. The Oba’s passing brought closure to my passage in Oyotunji and peace to my spirit concerning unresolved feelings about how I was mistreated upon leaving. My experiences and my children’s attachment through birth and spiritual kinship have endeared Oyotunji African Village to us as a living shrine. When I returned to the village in 2006, for the coronation of the present Oba (Adejuyigbe Adefunmi II), I pledged to give a year of classes from the Self-Empowerment Workshops (SEW) series that I instituted during one of my times of residence in Jamaica during the 1990s. The eight years living in Jamaica helped me in my healing process, and I have overcome the bitterness and sadness that I had long associated with Oyotunji. In Jamaica,

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I received spiritual revelations, which led to the creation and facilitation of the SEW empowerment curriculum referred to above. These courses have become a powerful tool for people in the African Diaspora, helping them to find forgiveness and healing for themselves as well as for their ancestors and families. The orishas, the power of my ancestors, the efficacy of my shrines, and the unending faith that I have in the divination system—given to me in Oyotunji through the ancient teachings of Ifa—continue to sustain me during the good and bad times of life. These forces keep me connected to Oyotunji—wherever I find myself in the world, in life. Today I continue to teach, train, and counsel people all over the world through my SEW retreats, ordination ceremonies, lectures, and private consultations. I make time to teach my grandchildren the way of our ancestors and to tell them stories about the time that we lived in and helped build Oyotunji—the living shrine.

NOTES 1. Details about the history of Oyotunji African Village and its founder are documented in several published works. Louis Djisovi Ikukomi Eason, a longtime associate whom I first met as a visitor to the village in 1971, wrote IFA: The Yoruba God of Divination in Nigeria and the United States (Trenton: Africa World Press, 2008). Other specialists include Carl M. Hunt, Oyotunji Village: The Yoruba Movement in America (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979); and Tracey Hucks, ‘‘Approaching the Gods: An Historical Narrative of African Americans and Yoruba Religion in the United States, 1959 to the Present,’’ PhD diss., Cambridge: Harvard University, 1998. Also, Yeyefini Efunbolade, ‘‘The Living Shrine,’’ unpublished manuscript. 2. See Roy S. Bryce-Laporte, ‘‘Crisis, Contraculture,and Religion among West Indians in the Panama Canal Zone’’ In Afro-American Anthropology: Comparative Perspectives, ed. Norman E. Whitten Jr. and John F. Szwed (New York: Free Press, 1970), 103–118 for more on the Benjinite Church. 3. Peniel E. Joseph has written about the politics, arts, and styles of this black cultural nationalist era in WAITING ‘TIL THE MIDNIGHT HOUR: A Narrative History of Black Power in America (New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2006), 254–257. 4. Eason also has described this woman and Awolowo (who was elevated to chief in the early seventies) in this early period in Oyotunji in his book, IFA, 21–22. 5. Milton C. Jordan provided a pictorial layout of Oyotunji and described its struggles with polygamy in ‘‘African Kingdom in South Carolina,’’ SEPIA 24, No. 4 (April 1975). 6. See, for example, John S. Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophies (Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1970), 186–188.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Bryce-Laporte, Roy S. ‘‘Crisis, Contraculture and Religion among West Indians in the Panama Canal Zone.’’ In Afro-American Anthropology: Comparative Perspectives, edited by Norman E. Whitten Jr. and John F. Szwed. New York: Free Press, 1970. Eason, Louis Djisovi Ikukomi. IFA: The Yoruba God of Divination in Nigeria and the United States.Trenton: Africa World Press, 2008. Hucks, Tracey. Approaching the Gods: An Historical Narrative of African Americans and Yoruba Religion in the United States, 1959 to the Present. PhD diss. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1998. Hunt, Carl M. Oyotunji Village: The Yoruba Movement in America. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979. Jordan, Milton C. ‘‘African Kingdom in South Carolina,’’ SEPIA 24, No. 4 (April 1975). Joseph, Peniel E. WAITING ‘TIL THE MIDNIGHT HOUR: A Narrative History of Black Power in America. New York: Henry Holt & Company, 2006. Mbiti, John S. African Religions and Philosophies. Garden City, New York: Anchor Books, 1970.

CHAPTER

4

Vodou: A Heritage of Power Susheel Bibbs

INTRODUCTION

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ven after more than 200 years in the Diaspora and the Americas, the religion called Vodou remains the object of controversy. On the one hand, many American films and the popular press of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries have described it in purely pejorative terms. For example, writer Toussaint Desrosiers called it ‘‘an amalgam of imagination’’ in the 1970’s.’’1 Conversely, recognized scholar/practitioners, such as former Harvard scholar Wande Abimbola, assert that Vodou is not the practice of evil hexes and spells depicted in the horror movies of the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, but rather a shamanistic religion of the African Diaspora with a solid core of belief.2 Despite such opposing views, Vodou over time has brought empowerment to its initiates (mambos and houngans) and through them, to the public at large. But what is Vodou?

VODOU: A RELIGION Vodou is a religion. The core beliefs (tenets) of the faith unify its vision, and along with several other elements, make it more than ‘‘hoodoo’’—a collection of magical practices or the collection of associated cults that some have described. In fact, today Vodou is the national religion of Haiti. It is a religion because it shares the common elements of all religions: a priestly lineage, a traditional initiation, an ordered ceremony, as well as specific core beliefs.3

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Vodou has a priestly lineage in that it has a prescribed set of rituals for initiation. Thus, although in Haiti becoming an initiate can be inherited, elected, or mandated, each person must still undergo an initiation with a similar set of rituals to officially become a priest: First, Lave´ Tet (dedication to a particular lwa through a head-washing ceremony), second, Marriage (a wedding-like ceremony that forges a relationship between the initiate and a particular spirit) and finally, Couche´, which itself has stages—kanzo (alignment as an official member of a congregation), sou pwen (alignment with one’s primary spirit or met tet and entry into the priesthood), and asogwe (receipt of the rattle of a priest with extra priestly duties). A more esoteric way of coming to initiation, which involves being claimed and removed by a spirit for a prescribed period, exists in Haiti but this unusual kind of initiation must follow a pattern to be accepted and still is often followed by formal rites. 4 Even becoming a Vodou queen (high priest among priests), as reported in nineteenth-century New Orleans, involved selection by a committee and the initiation of a priest. Second, Vodou is a religion because it has a prescribed order of ceremony, which resembles that of other religions. In fact, enslaved Africans could discern elements in Catholic ceremony similar to those of the ancient African rituals, and so related well to participating in the church for this reason. For example, the Catholic priest enters with an urn of smoke to cleanse the space, and the priest of African religions blows smoke for the same reason; the Catholic priest sprinkles water; the Vodou priest blows liquor to establish connection with spirit. Finally, Vodou is a religion because it has specific core beliefs as do all religions. One such belief is that there is one God, who is everywhere. According to scholars, such as Laennec Hurbon, members of the faith hold that all spiritual forces (lwa) are governed by one God, a supreme being or power, who is omnipresent and is entreated as Bon Dje (from the French Bon Dieu), meaning ‘‘the good or High God.’’ Thus Vodou devotee’s also appreciated the focus of the worship services of the Catholic church, it being dedicated to the most high ‘‘God,’’ (Bondje). Similar ritual elements, along with this appreciation help explain why members of the faith, who were forced to adopt Catholicism during slavery, resist eliminating Catholic elements from their liturgy and why they continue to practice both faiths in tandem today. However, the belief in one supreme being, which is shared by many faiths, creates a unique appreciation in Vodou. Since God is seen as everywhere, Vodouisants (devotees) cannot only revere the Most High God (Bon Dje) anywhere, but they see no contradiction in parallel African-Catholic religious practice because they have no ceremonies for Bon Dje, whereas there are many for lwa. They see the lwa (spirit forces) as ‘‘God’s department heads,’’ who can assist them daily with aspects of their lives, and as the

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Catholics do with the biblical archangels, they entreat various lwa to do ‘‘God’s’’ bidding on their behalf, while they see Bon Dje as the overarching, ultimate power. One scholar, Michael Rock, explains this way, ‘‘Bondje is distant from his/her/its creation though, and so it is the spirits . . . that the vodouisant turns to for help, as well as to the [spirits of the] ancestors. The vodouisant worships God and serves the spirits.’’ Awolalu, a scholar-priest of the related Yoruba tradition called Ifa, explained that although they sometimes refer to these lwa (spirit forces) as ‘‘the gods,’’ these worshippers understand well that there is one ‘‘god principle.’’5 Vodou incorporates a high level of appreciation for the ritual and practices of other faiths. According to Palero and author Carlos Montenegro, in African traditions, every spirit of every faith, if discovered, is to be revered and honored. Thus, Vodou, in line with its basic tenets, makes acquisitions from other faiths a way of honoring spirit and enhancing the spiritual development and well-being of its people. This makes the criticism that Vodou is diluted by such acquisitions a misunderstanding of a basic belief of faith— a vision of inclusiveness and respect; its assimilations are part of the faith and should be seen as no more diminishing than new formularies are to a pharmacy.6

A FEW CORE BELIEFS OF VODOU • One follows God’s laws through constant communion with spirit-beings and through ancestor spirits. • One must propitiate and praise spirits in ceremony and utilize them and the principles of nature (magic) to affect mankind’s destiny and to ward off evil—but not usually to conjure it. • The criteria for pure exchange is always practical. ‘‘What works’’ to solve problems is used despite differences in language, customs, or race. • One should adapt dynamically to any new environment and honor the spirit forces there.

MANY ROLES African Diaspora traditional religions influence every aspect of the lives of their participants—the many roles we play in life. They do so because the roles we play each day are seen as fields for achieving spiritual growth— that which proceeds from developing good character and balance in every daily endeavor. In my life I play many roles: Professionally I am known as a University lecturer in academia; I was born a Christian, but in 1977 became a first-level initiate-teacher of Vedanta (Indian scriptural teachings), and

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later spent many years studying Ifa, a Nigerian tradition. In the arts, I have been a professional classical singer and actress for 40 years, an author/ researcher in African American history, and an independent filmmaker. However, in 2006, when I added the role of a mambo of Vodou (a female initiate/ priestess), I formally began the process of integrating the powerful goals and vision of this religion into every part of my life. I was initiated in Port-au-Prince, Haiti by Alourdes Lovinski, the Haitian woman known the world over as gros mambo (high priestess) ‘‘Mama Lola.’’ ‘‘Mama’’ is a respectful, priestly designation that, similar to ‘‘Iya’’ of the Yoruba, means mother. Lola is derived from her first name—Alourdes. Lola is mobile; many of today’s mambos travel all over the world, and, as is usual, incorporate other religious traditions into their prescriptives and Vodou practices. Mama Lola exemplifies both mobility and the inclusiveness of mambos: she lives in Brooklyn, but has practiced in New Orleans, Haiti, the San Francisco Bay Area, other parts of the United States, and in Benin, W. Africa.7 After having researched the faith for six years, my personal journey with Vodou began in 1998 during one of Lola’s trips to Oakland. There, she was holding sessions to help promote the book written about her (Mama Lola), and not surprisingly, attending rituals of Santeria (an Afro-Hispanic faith) and giving private readings. Through my reading with Lola, the Lwa Damballah (a spirit of Vodou) suggested that I—an African American, Christian, Vedantan, Ifa devotee—would grow through the practice of Vodou. I considered this, and proceeded slowly, methodically, through the stages of initiation until I was confirmed in Haiti in August 2006 and given the asson (ceremonial rattle for communicating with spirit) in December 2007. However, being a mambo is a fledgling role for me and is still being defined in my life, so this chapter, rather than describing my life as a mambo, will show how Vodou has empowered the lives of two mambos who have inspired me— they are Mary Ellen Pleasant (the nineteenth-century activist-entrepreneur known as ‘‘the Mother of Civil Rights in California’’ (my research subject since 1991) and ‘‘Mam’zelle’’ Marie LaVeaux—Pleasant’s mentor and New Orleans’ most famous ‘‘Voodoo’’ queen. I hope that in detailing their accomplishments and the way in which one of them used the faith to inspire the other, I will help others understand Vodou and why, for these mambos, as for me, it provides empowerment—a heritage of power.

ROLES OF THE MAMBO Before examining Vodou’s empowerment in the lives of great mambos, I need to explain what a mambo is. A mambo is a female initiate (priestess) of Vodou. A male priest is called an hougan. Both share similar duties and respond to similar mandates of the faith. Author Leslie Desmangles

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describes the ancient expectations of a chief, which parallel those currently held for mambos and hougans.8 The expectations of a leader have remained constant over time: Mambos are not expected to preach, but to serve spirit, to facilitate the spiritual growth and service of others, and to protect those in their communities. The roles of the mambo are thus: 1) to serve spirit, 2) to communicate with spirit and help others do the same, and 3) to bring growth, inspiration, peace, and protection to her chosen community in an innovative way. According to scholar Patricia Blier and others, the word ‘‘Vodou’’ originates in the language of the Fon-Ewe people of old Dahomey, West Africa—now called Benin. There it is often spelled ‘‘Vodun’’ or ‘‘Vodou,’’ while in the ‘‘New World,’’ it is most often spelled phonetically—‘‘Voodoo.’’ However, that spelling, according to Marie LaVeaux scholars Carolyn Morrow Long and Ina Fandrich, began to appear during the occupation of Haiti by American marines and has a pejorative connotation. Therefore, this chapter does not use that spelling. Rather, it uses the ‘‘Vodou’’ spelling regardless of the locale or time period being described.

SERVICE TO SPIRIT The mambo’s roles are revealed in the three meanings of the word ‘‘Vodou’’ itself—1) spirit forces, 2) that which follows divination, and 3) that which brings cooling and peace. The word ‘‘Vodou’’ has two roots, vo and dun/du. Scholars and practitioners agree that the first meaning, derived from the first syllable, is ‘‘spirit.’’ In Vodou, spirit refers to revered ancestor spirits and countless spirit forces (divinities) called lwa/loa, whom devotees believe can be found everywhere. Reflective of the many constituent groups that originally formed the faith, the word lwa comes from one constituent group —the people of the Congo, but the concept of spirit forces (divinities) that support the creation is shared by all originators of the faith. Thus, similar visions enabled them to form one very flexible faith.9 Some lwa simply provide support to human beings, whereas others, somewhat like the archangels of Christianity, govern various dominions, natural forces, or elements such as the wind, the sea, the ocean, the rivers, thunder, iron, etc. However, each force also relates to concepts, such as change, strength, or courage, that affect humankind. In Vodou, each person at birth also reflects the traits of and is guided by a given lwa (called a designated-head spirit, or met tet). Devotees share that spirit’s traits, and their ‘‘head spirit’’ can help them hone the best of those traits (such as integrity, focus, peacefulness, honesty, balance, fortitude, fertility, justice, and transformative power) to reach their highest human potential. Damballah-Aida Wedo is my met tet—the Haitian lwa that

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symbolizes the enlivening and unifying force of life and ancestral memory— our DNA. Author (and mambo) Karen McCarthy Brown explains, for example, that those whose met tet is the spirit of iron (Papa Ogou, who symbolizes fortitude, justice, and loyalty, etc.) can ask that spirit’s assistance in developing those traits so that they can move towards a more balanced life. And balance and good character are seen as the goals of each life. The mambo’s mandate related to spirit, therefore, is to help devotees gain Lwa’s assistance towards achieving these goals.10 Through initiation, the mambo is aligned with the spirit world to receive direct guidance from her met tet, and she is to use that ‘‘direct connection’’ to help others receive lwas’ assistance. Through direct messages, collective ritual, and prayer, a mambo guides devotees of spirit towards a better life. This does not mean that all mambos function as ritual priests. Each initiate is elevated by the experience of initiation and is free to use it as she pleases. For example, Zora Neale Hurston used her initiate status to elevate the language and folklore of rural southern African Americans, while Katherine Dunham used hers to establish social services in Haiti as she elevated Afro-Caribbean dance worldwide. No matter how a mambo defines her role and set of service, each gives service on behalf of lwa and, using her unique talents, defines her mode of guidance, her community, and service uniquely, albeit within guidelines. The dynamic female initiates described in this chapter—Pleasant and LaVeaux—employ/employed Vodou as their ‘‘heritage of power’’—uniquely interpreting it through their special talents and direct connection with spirit. In so doing, each left a legacy to the world.

GUIDANCE FROM SPIRIT The second meaning of Vodou refers to the du part of the word, which reflects the faith’s relationship to the Odu of Ifa, a West African system of divination. The meaning, however, is not that all priests must consult Ifa, but rather that they must use some tool to consult spirit to determine what is to be done in ceremony, in healing, and in creating formularies. Thus, in service to her community, the mambo does not act merely from supposition or imagination. Through her direct connection with spirit, born of her initiation, she does receive direct messages, especially during ritual, but she also divines to gain direct guidance and to direct her own life and talents to their highest potential. Her divination (consult with spirit) may employ cards, candles, or cowery shells—old or new systems—but a guidance system is used to ‘‘ask the source.’’11 Like the Native American shaman, she communicates directly with spirit forces through signs and presides over rituals and healings for her chosen community.

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THE THIRD MANDATE OF VODOU—THE MANDATE TO INNOVATE The third meaning of the word Vodou is, ‘‘One draws water for rest’’—that is—‘‘for cooling or to find peace,’’ and according to Benin scholars, the words ‘‘for rest’’ here mean ‘‘for cooling’’ or ‘‘to find peace’’—the state that leads to reaching one’s highest destiny, which is the goal of all African/ Diaspora faiths. Du says, ‘‘oniwa funfun’’—‘‘one with good character is guided by light’’—meaning that one who is balanced and peaceful or ‘‘has a cool head’’ (ori tutu) can perceive the road and teachings that lead to good character. And, one (devotee or priest) with ‘‘a cool head’’can glean the best that lwa have to offer in any given situation and, thereby, can receive the blessing of that situation (a`she´). In Vodou the blessing of such spiritual alignment is expressed in concepts of the gros and petit bon ange—as the balance of the heavenly body of thoughts and feelings with the individual one. This alignment allows a devotee to possess the ‘‘stillness’’ to fulfill her highest potential and destiny on earth.12 The third mandate of a mambo derived from the word Vodou means to bring peace to the community through improvisation and innovation. Thus, the mambo herself must be ‘‘cool’’ (balanced and creative) and must bring innovation—‘‘coolness’’ (uniqueness) to her community . In African culture, being cool means being able to master the basics of something such that (as in jazz) one can freely embellish (add critical difference) to those basics. Devotees revere their priests as ‘‘consecrated people,’’ and they, therefore, expect them to be conduits for innovation and divine inspiration. This is the primary reason that mambos always innovate and improvise freely in discharging their duties. 13 The two mambos discussed below served spirit uniquely, sought guidance for that service, and passed on their knowledge, one to the other, innovatively.

SHARING THE MANDATES: MARY PLEASANT AND MARIE LAVEAUX A Yoruba proverb says, ‘‘We stand on the shoulders of those who come before us.’’ The shoulders of Mary Ellen Pleasant and her mentor Marie LaVeaux exemplify the first two mandates of a mambo—service of lwa through community and the use of guidance to serve them uniquely. Their work certainly has paved the way for me. I came to study Vodou in 1994 through my research on Mary Ellen Pleasant, the nineteenth-century African American known today as ‘‘The Mother of Civil Rights in California.’’ Studying Pleasant inspired me to research the life of her mentor, Marie LaVeaux, New Orleans’ most famous Vodou queen. Ultimately, studying the lives of these two women required an in-depth study of Vodou itself. Mary Ellen Pleasant (1817–1904) was an activist and a successful entrepreneur. Despite her published 1902 claim that she was born free in

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Philadelphia in 1814, my research shows that she was probably born a slave near Augusta, Georgia around 1817. In a pre-1902 unpublished memoir that she dictated to a young scribe named Charlotte Dennis Downs, Pleasant claimed to be the illegitimate daughter of an enslaved Haitian mambo and a Virginia planter’s son, John Hampden Pleasant. She subsequently gave 1817 as her year of birth.14 Research seems to support these facts better than the date she gave and published in 1902. If true, Pleasant came to Vodou the traditional Haitian way–through inheritance, that is, in Haiti, if the mother is a priest, the child of the next generation often becomes a priest. According to Downs, Pleasant said that her mother (also named Mary) was flogged to death as a penalty for leading Vodou ceremonies on the Georgia plantation where Pleasant was born. At the time, Pleasant was about nine—certainly old enough to have had opportunity to observe her mother’s ‘‘spirit work’’ and to learn something about the faith from her mother before she died. It is significant that Mary remembered and spoke about what she thought caused her mother’s murder. The trauma of the tragedy and associated rituals must have been seared into the young daughter’s psyche, nurturing antislavery sentiments and thoughts about the self-empowering potential of her religion and service to community. Following her mother’s murder, when Mary was between the ages of nine and eleven, a planter is said to have purchased Mary and placed her in a New Orleans convent to be educated. Removing her from the convent, said Pleasant, her purchaser, fearing criticism for helping a slave, placed her into the trust of a friend, a Cincinnati businessman named Lewis Alexander Williams, with the stipulation that she would serve his wife and eventually be freed. However, after a conflict with Mary over his mistreatment of his wife, Williams instead placed her into indenture for nine years with a Quaker storekeeper, Mrs. Hussey of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts. The Hussey family and their Quaker abolitionist associates—the Gardners—became like family and helped to unshackle Mary’s mind from the bonds of slavery, fueling her desire to fight it. However, the progress of this early life did not enable her to pursue her inheritance as a mambo. The stark contrast between life as a Quaker and her memories of communal ritual and practice as a slave must have caused Mary to wonder deeply about the source of her mother’s vibrancy and self-empowerment, and at least one source says that she practiced her own rituals after leaving the Quakers. Based on this reasoning, it is not surprising that by 1869, Pleasant—who by then had amassed a joint business fortune assessed as high as $30,000,000—was also a mambo.15 After her indenture, she married in Boston and inherited money upon the death of her first husband, James W. Smith, who was an abolitionist and slave rescuer on the Underground Railroad. By 1852 Pleasant had

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married John James Pleasance (Pleasants) and sailed to San Francisco to escape persecution for her own slave-rescue work on the Underground Railroad. On arrival there, she placed herself in service to young, wealthy businessmen, and their tips helped her to invest her inheritance wisely. The business acumen that Pleasant had gained in Nantucket supported that process. A woman of financial substance, Mary would continue to fight slavery. She would later rescue escaped slaves in San Francisco and open new jobs for them. She would eventually return east to aid the abolitionist John Brown in his raid on the federal arsenal at Harper’s Ferry, Virginia, after collecting funds in San Francisco. She would journey to Chatham, Canada, to serve Brown and abolitionists there as well and then return to San Francisco to strike blows for civil rights.16 By 1863, Pleasant was acknowledged as a community leader in the newspapers. She became a veritable Martin Luther King, Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks combined—a Martin Luther King because she could love across boundaries of race and class without losing sight of her goal (liberty for herself and her people), a Malcolm X because she fostered self-determination and opened new jobs for blacks and believed that slavery had to be ended by any means necessary, and a Rosa Parks because she scored remarkable gains for people of color on the San Francisco streetcars. To test the new civil rights laws of 1863, Pleasant orchestrated and fought court challenges for herself and others against local streetcar companies. In and out of court, these cases established the right of blacks to ride the streetcar system in San Francisco without harassment. Most importantly, one of these cases (Pleasants vs. North Beach and Mission Railroad, 1868) set precedent in the California State Supreme Court and was used in 1982 by Attorney David Oppenheimer to gain the first punitive and compensatory damages in a California discrimination lawsuit. Pleasant’s case thus changed California law and left modern-day civil rights a priceless legacy.17

THE MARIE LAVEAUX MODEL But how did Pleasant accomplish these things? Legend says that Pleasant was an associate of Marie LeVeaux (called by the endearment ‘‘Mam’zelle’’ and ‘‘Vodou queen’’ in New Orleans), but my research was the first to show that Mary Pleasant fulfilled her destiny as a mambo by studying with Marie LaVeaux and that she did so intentionally to gain the empowerment to do her civil rights work in California. She gained this empowerment through a unique social and religious model that Mam’zelle LaVeaux passed on to her. According to Charlotte Downs, to whom Pleasant dictated her unpublished first memoir, Pleasant studied with

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LaVeaux in New Orleans just prior to leaving for San Francisco in 1851. This implies that by then she had become a mambo, the only way she would have been allowed to do this study. For many years I had known of reports of Pleasant’s study with LaVeaux through the papers of author Helen Holdredge in Los Angeles and in the San Francisco Library’s History Room; however, the reports had always come indirectly from Pleasant and, thus, needed additional corroboration. For example, in 1930, Downs (Pleasant’s scribe) told Holdredge, ‘‘Hardly known was that ‘mammy’ [sic] learned Vodou from Marie Laveau in New Orleans . . . . Mammy’s husband was in some way connected with the man that Marie was living with at that time.’’ However, I knew that Downs was merely reporting what Pleasant had dictated to her. I only became convinced of this association, when in 1997, after locating the estate of author Helen Holdredge (who wrote controversial biographies on Pleasant in the 1950s), I found a ledger with remarkable interviews conducted by Holdredge with a member of LaVeaux’s family. In this ledger, Holdredge not only interviewed the 90-some year-old Downs about Pleasant’s first unpublished memoir, but she also recorded 16 interviews with a 95-year-old woman named Liga Foley, who claimed to be Marie LaVeaux’s ‘‘lost’’ granddaughter and, most importantly, said that she had seen Pleasant in New Orleans studying with LaVeaux in the 1850s. Liga further claimed that she herself had fled New Orleans and had gone to San Francisco, because she did not want to succeed her grandmother (LaVeaux) in the religion and that she had met Pleasant in San Fancisco during the 1860s, while she (Foley) was in hiding. Foley was hiding from anyone who knew LaVeaux, and so she spoke only French while there and identified herself as an Indian named Anaria. This meant that she could not have known Pleasant’s other associates. Foley told Holdredge, ‘‘I know what Mrs. Pleasants look like. I saw her . . . (course, she was named Pleasance then, her man being related to Marie’s man, Christophe Glapion, and the both of them attached to Emperor Christophe in some way). Marie was teaching Mrs. Pleasance Vodou so she could use it in some way.’’18 This was the type of eyewitness account that I had long sought for documenting Pleasant’s association with LaVeaux—an account from one who did not claim to have gotten her information from Pleasant. Later, my research supported key aspects of Foley’s story, making it so credible that in 1997 the New Orleans Historical Society invited me to report my findings. One value of Foley’s story is that it confirms Pleasant’s study with LaVeaux, but another is that it reveals a connection between that study and Pleasant’s work in California.19 LaVeaux followed the mandates of a mambo to serve and protect her community, and Pleasant came to her to receive her heritage

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of power—the religion and LaVeaux’s methods of using it to effect social change and to protect her people. LaVeaux’s gifts, which have been called ‘‘the LaVeaux Model,’’ would enable Pleasant to become ‘‘The Mother of Civil Rights in California.’’ Before Marie LaVeaux became ‘‘Queen,’’ Vodou in New Orleans was fractionalized and was oppressed as a religion. LaVeaux is credited with unifying Vodou in New Orleans and with helping it to become a powerful social force against Americans who oppressed the indigenous Creoles and the Vodou faith at the time after the Louisiana Purchase. The Americans were taking over in New Orleans, taking the land of the Creoles, LaVeaux’s people, and persecuting Vodouissants. Pleasant gained access to techniques from LaVeaux as a means of protecting black people in California. Marie LaVeaux was born in New Orleans in 1801, according to scholar Ina Fandrich, and she died there in 1881. She descended from the Frenchspeaking, prosperous gens de couleur—the Free People of Color of New Orleans. These people of mixed (black-Creole) heritage, who designed and developed much of what we call the French Quarter of New Orleans today, were social activists no matter what religion they followed. LaVeaux’s mother was a black woman named Marie D’Arcantel and her father, Carlos Laveau, was a mixed-heritage son of Charles Laveau Trudeau, an influential FrenchCreole New Orleanean.20 Some say that LaVeaux’s work had impact worldwide; however, she consciously defined her ‘‘community’’ as the Creoles (both black and white) of New Orleans who were being oppressed by the Americans, her various devotees, and the slaves of New Orleans, who were allowed to dance in Congo Square each weekend. LaVeaux responded to the requests of Creole landowners to intervene in the prisons on their behalf and to the requests of her devotees to protect the slaves of nearby plantations during their weekend dance ceremonies in Congo Square. Author/practitioner Luisah Teish (Iyanifa Fa’jembola Fatunmise) termed her response the LaVeaux Model.21 It involved intervention via the special leveraging techniques that she passed on to Pleasant In this model, LaVeaux most probably used her Trudeau family connections, but definitely gained secrets from her work as a hairdresser and from informant-devotees planted as employees in the homes of wealthy Americans and others to gain secrets she could use to relieve her people from oppression. With her ‘‘secrets’’ and her skill in ritual, LaVeaux helped win court cases, releases from prison, and freedom from harassment. Certainly she brought ‘‘cooling’’ and ‘‘peace’’ to the dancers in Congo Square when she used her techniques and political clout to prevent the police from stopping their dancing. In so doing, certainly she empowered the dancers in Congo Square, giving them a sense of awe, protection, and pride. One devotee of New Orleans Vodou interviewed during the 1930

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Federal Writer’s Project, who was familiar with the legend of LaVeaux in Congo Square, confirmed LaVeaux’s success by saying, ‘‘When the police come messin’ around she would holler at em’ ‘Shut the goddam door!’ There wasn’t no door when they was out there in the open, but that meant for them to go away because they wasn’t wanted. And they used to get out.’’22 Clearly LaVeaux applied the mandate to empower and protect her people through her model. Another part of the LaVeaux (socio-politicalreligious) Model included running a matchmaking house called La Maison Blanche. There, she (or her daughter) could gain additional personal secrets to use as leverage to help her community. LaVeaux passed on this model to Pleasant, and also the ways of Vodou ceremony.23 Pleasant’s actions in San Francisco confirm her use of this model. For example, where LaVeaux used La Maison Blanche to compromise wealthy Americans, Pleasant used Geneva Cottage for the same leveraging effect. And, as LaVeaux used informants in homes to gather secrets from the powerful, Pleasant did the same to help the powerless in her community. Marie LaVeaux was successful as a mambo/social advocate overall. In addition to her public involvement in New Orleans, her obituaries assert that she helped improve the public’s perception of Vodou through so-called ‘‘decoy (staged) rituals’’ in Congo Square. She also divined and provided formularies for people all over the world. Legend says that clients included the Emperor of China and British royalty. LaVeaux allowed homeless devotees to reside on her simple property, and she served as a nurse during at least two New Orleans cholera epidemics. Located below sea level and oppressed by humidity, the city was infested with mosquitoes and was called ‘‘a damp grave.’’ For 21 years until she was too elderly to do so, LaVeaux also ministered to the imprisoned whom she could not otherwise assist. Historian Dr. Fandrich also asserts that LaVeaux bought slaves whom she then manumitted—a practice that could have attracted the Underground Railroad slave rescuer, Mary Pleasant, when she fled to New Orleans to avoid capture in the east for her slave-rescue activities.24 So profound was her service that, today, people journey to the gravesite of Marie LaVeaux in St. Louis Cemetery No. 1 to entreat her protection and assistance as an elevated ancestor. They do so by leaving offerings and by marking her tomb with an ‘‘X,’’ which symbolizes the crossroads of communication (through Esu-Papa Legba, the spirit of communication) between man and spirit. Innovation is marked by dexterity and mastery in any arena that benefits the people. Marie LaVeaux’s innovative use of leveraging for favors, of ritual and formulary to secure releases from prison or litigation, and of placing informants in homes and preserving the dancing in Congo Square was derived from this understanding. Acclaimed dance innovator, anthropologist, and educator Katherine Dunham, who became a fully initiated Haitian mambo

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in 1967, once referred to the importance of dance in the troubled times of slavery saying, ‘‘They [slaves] had sense to know that if they kept their drums and rituals, they would be saving themselves.’’25 She meant, as dance scholar Yvonne Daniel puts it, that ‘‘When permitted . . . , Africans and African Americans danced, sang, and drummed ancient knowledge to the present,’’ that is, ‘‘they received nonverbal guidance within dance/ music performance.’’ They embodied that guidance and used that process to integrate all of their intuitive and acquired knowledge. Thus, preserving dance was tantamount to ‘‘saving oneself,’’ because dance is a means to and integration of one’s inner knowing (konnessance) and the growth that follows.26 Every mambo fosters that konnessance of dance within ceremony—knowledge that helps the devotee to integrate all forms of knowing and that brings the wisdom of lwa to a Vodou ceremony. With this understanding, LaVeaux devised unique, innovative plans to protect the dancers in Congo Square and in so doing ‘‘saved’’ her people.

MOVING FORWARD INITIATION STORY Mama Lola, my mentor, has a presence that is preserving Vodou all over the world. She was sent to Benin, West Africa in 2000 to represent Vodou in the Diaspora—the first to be so honored. Her peristyle (Vodou temple/center) in Haiti provides ritual, food, and clothing; her Brooklyn home serves the Haitian community and others there, and (since 2001) her work in the Vodou community in New Orleans has made her an important leader there. Lola runs charities in Haiti and crosses the country to Oakland at least once a year. The book about her work by Dr. Karen McCarthy Brown, titled Mama Lola, has become a classic in scholarship on Vodou. However, most important, is that she lives the Vodou belief in the unity of spirit. When we met, I had already studied Ifa, another African tradition under expert practitioners—Iyanifa Fajembola Fatunmise (author Luisah Teish), Nigerian Chief Bolu Fatunmise, author Awo Fa’Lokun Fatunmbi, Iyanifa Fakayode–for many years, so her obvious command of divination and prescriptives impressed me. Lola read for me regarding several personal and family problems and performed ritual on my behalf, and I benefited so greatly each time that, in 2001, I eagerly took the first step towards initiation—my own self-development. Restoring health is often a by-product of initiation, and a serious illness accompanied my initiation, although I did not know it when I arranged my ritual date. In fact, when I became aware of it, I saw it as a side issue,

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unrelated to the initiation ceremonies I was to undergo. Nevertheless, within months after completing my initiation in Haiti, to my surprise and the puzzlement of my doctors, my diagnosed condition simply disappeared. Lola found that a normal result of the ‘‘cleansing fire’’ of initiation. A year and four months after my initiation, Lola gave me the important rattle, called the asson, which is a symbol and tool of a mambo. At that time, I was not surprised, given her vision of inclusiveness, that she immediately assigned me to a study with a local Oakland priest of the Edo (Benin) tradition, Ohen Imeni (Nedra Williams), an educator/philosopher and visual artist. I continue to have a broad base of spiritual guidance.

LOOKING AHEAD At this writing, in addition to lecturing at the university level, I currently serve ‘‘my community’’ as a performer, writer, and filmmaker who discusses the meaning of Vodou in forums and in print and depicts the civic activism of Mary Pleasant and those like her in film. Like those who came before me, I see the assumption of multiple social and priestly roles as part of my spiritual lineage, and I accept the legacy of those whom I have just described as a pathway to my future. Clearly the multitalented, innovative mambos celebrated in this chapter have inspired me, and with their model and the mandates of Vodou, I now find my way. I embody the Christian, Vedic, African, and Diaspora faiths I have studied and already realize that I will integrate them in my life rather than deny one or the other. The mambos I described brought cooling (innovation) to their chosen fields, and I have developed films that meld unique aspects of my experience in ways that have been recognized as innovative. I look forward to ‘‘standing on the shoulders of those who have come before’’ to develop my vision of Vodou as a heritage of power.

NOTES Heritage of Power (San Francisco: M.E.P. Publications) is the name of a book I wrote in 1998, which described LaVeaux’s understanding and mode of practicing Vodou as a powerful tool that she passed on to Mary Pleasant for use in her civil rights work in San Francisco. The book documented my contention that the application of this faith and its practices in San Francisco enabled Pleasant to become ‘‘The Mother of Civil Rights in California.’’ 1. Toussaint Desrosiers, Haitian Vodou (New York: Ame´ricas 22-2), 35–39. 2. Luisah Teish, Jambalaya, HarperSanFrancisco, 1985, 111; Ina Fandrich, ‘‘The Mysterious Voodoo Queen, Marie LaVeaux,’’ PhD diss., Temple University, 1994, distributed by UMI microfilms, 69, 70; Wande Abimbola, Ifa Will Mend Our Broken World (Boston: Athelia Henrietta Press, 1997).

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3. Wande Abimbola, Ifa: An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus (Boston: Athelia Henrietta Press, 1997), 14, 18–22; Laennec Hurbon, Voodoo: Search for the Spirit (New York: Abrams Publishers, 1995), 108–13; Herbert Asbury, The French Quarter (New York: Garden City Publishing, 1938), 254; Karen McCarthy Brown, Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 276–80, 320–26, 351–52; George Brandon, Santeria, from Africa to the New World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 13. 4. Brown, Mama Lola, 215–17. 5. These sources combined establish the Vodou concept of God and spirit. Source of quote: Michael Rock, ‘‘Haitian Vodou: Serving the Spirits,’’ June 1, 2003, http://www.witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=ustx&c=trads&id=6325. Source of quote: J. Omosade Awolalu, Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites (Boston: Athelia Henrietta Press, 1996), 5, 6. Leslie Desmangles, Faces of the Gods (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992) 4–6, 63, 75; Brandon, Santeria, from Africa to the New World, 13; Awo Fa’Lokun Fatunmbi interviews by the author, 1998; Brown, Mama Lola, 276; Abimbola. Ifa Will Mend Our Broken World, 22; Hurbon. Voodoo, 71–79; Alfred Metraux, Voodoo in Haiti (New York: Schoken Books, 1972), 88–91, 170, 305–322; Awo Fa’Lokun Fatunmbi, Awo (Bronx: Original Publications, 1992), 22–23, 108–11; Fatunmbi, Iwa Pele (Bronx: Original Publications, 1991), 8. 6. These sources combined establish the philosophical African origins of assimilative practices in Vodou. Fatunmbi interview by the author, 1998; Teish, Jambalaya; Abimbola. Ifa Will Mend Our Broken World, 106–7; Brandon, Santeria, from Africa to the New World, 5, 13, 18, 23; Lilith Dorsey, ‘‘Interview with Carlos Montenegro,’’ Oshun 3, No. 2 (Summer 1998): 6, 7; Joseph Nevadomsky, ‘‘The Initiation of a Priestess: Olokun Initiation,’’ Journal Unknown (1998): 206, courtesy of Luisah Teish, Oakland, CA; Chief Aare Olalekan Atanda, lecture: Ifa, Center for African and African-American Culture, San Francisco, November 4, 1998; Malidoma Some´, Of Water and Spirit (New York: Penguin Books, 1994), 52, 53; Colin McEvedy, The Penguin Atlas of African History (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), 20, 32, 34; Desmangles, Faces of the Gods, 5–11. 7. Interviews by the author of Mama Lola in 2001, 2003, 2006. 8. Leadership in Vodou defined: Desmangles, Faces of the Gods, 2, 64. 9. Hurbon. Voodoo, 13; Patricia Blier, African Vodun (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995), 38–40; Carolyn M. Long, Spiritual Merchants (Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001) 37; Desmangles, Faces of the Gods, 35, 36. 10. Brown, Mama Lola, 113. 11. Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit (New York: Vintage Books, 1984), 16; Margaret Drewal, Yoruba Ritual (Bloomington: Indiana University

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Press, 1984), xix; Blier, African Vodun, 38–40; Susheel Bibbs, Heritage of Power (San Francisco: M.E.P. Publications, 1998), 29. 12. Blier. African Vodun, 38–40. Drewal. Yoruba Ritual, xix; Fatunmbi, Iba’se Orisa (Bronx: Original Publications. 1994), 1; Xochipala Maes-Valdez interview by the author, 1998; Fatunmbi interview by the author. 13. The concept of itutu is held the world over: Bibbs, Heritage of Power, 41; Drewal, Yoruba Ritual, xv, 4; Some´. Of Water and Spirit, 52, 53; Thompson, Flash of the Spirit, 9–11; Maes-Valdez interview by the author; H. H. Swami Chinmayananda, The Bhagavad Gita (Bombay: Chinmaya Publications, 1984); H. H. Swami Dayananda Saraswati lecture notes by the author; Halifu Osumare (Iya Oyadamilola) lecture notes by the author. 14. The Helen Holdredge ‘‘Mammy Pleasant’’ Collection of the San Francisco History Room, San Francisco Main Public Library consists of witnessed, transcribed interviews or interview notes from interviews that Helen Holdredge conducted with close associates of Pleasant. They are found in ledgers that are titled only by number. The item from this collection that provides insight into Pleasant’s birth and early years in slavery is: ‘‘Ledger 24: Interviews’’ (with Charlotte Downs, pp. 34–36). Other sources regarding her birth and early years in slavery are: ‘‘Charlotte Downs’ Interviews,’’ Helen Holdredge Estate, 1930, p. 6; Mary Ellen Pleasant, Memoir, Emma Kaiser, scribe (Vallejo, CA: Delaca Estate, 1880); ‘‘The Life Story of Mammy Pleasance,’’ San Francisco Examiner, October 13, 1895, 17; Sam P. Davis, ‘‘Autobiography of Mary Ellen Pleasant. Part 1,’’ Pandex of the Press (San Francisco), 1902, 1; Philadelphia Archdiocese, cemetery records pertaining to Pleasant’s parentage, sent to author February 1994; Thomas Gardner, Letter to Olive Sherwood (Vallejo, CA: Delaca Estate, 1906). 15. Davis, ‘‘Autobiography of Mary Ellen Pleasant,’’ 8; Pleasant, Memoir, Sam P. Davis, scribe (Los Angeles: MEP/Davis-Crowell Estate, 1901), 1–3; William Willmore, Jr., on testimony of James Dennison of Nantucket (Helen Holdredge Collection, ‘‘Ledger 26: Interviews,’’ 1938); Thomas Gardner, Letter to Olive Sherwood; William C. Gardner, Letter to Mary Ellen Pleasant (Vallejo, CA: Delaca Estate, November 7, 1858, November 23, 1863 [postscript]); ‘‘Papers of Thomas Bell,’’ Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley; ‘‘The Insolvency Papers of Mary Pleasant,’’ (Vallejo, CA: Delaca Estate, 1899). 16. The following sources had to be carefully correlated to yield findings on Pleasant and John Brown, findings that some scholars had often previously disputed. Susheel Bibbs, Heritage of Power, 70; Davis, ‘‘Autobiography of Mary Ellen Pleasant,’’ 3; Lynn Hudson, The Making of Mammy Pleasant (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003); Robert E. McGlone, phone interview by the author, 1955; Pleasant, ‘‘Letter Dictated to Mrs. S. [Sherwood],’’ six-page fragment (Vallejo, CA: Delaca Estate, undated); Pleasant, Memoir, 1901, 1–5; Louis De Caro, interview by the author, 2003; Helen Holdredge Collection, ‘‘Ledger 24: Interviews’’ (with David Ruggles, Jr., p. 145,

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[margin note]); Helen Holdredge Collection, ‘‘Ledger 26: Interviews’’ (with Charlotte Downs, 9/6/21, 11/10/21); Pleasant, ‘‘Second Marriage,’’ in Memoir, Sam P. Davis, scribe (Carson City, NV: MEP/Davis-Crowell Estate, 1902), 1, 3; Jean Libby, interview by the author, 2003. 17. Bibbs, Meet Mary Pleasant, documentary film (Sacramento: M.E.P. Productions, 2007), http://www.mepleasant.com/film.html; Bibbs, Meet Mary Pleasant DVD Archive (David Oppenheimer video interview, 2003: ‘‘Who was Pleasant?’’). 18. ‘‘Charlotte Downs’ Interviews,’’ Helen Holdredge Estate, 6, 10, and unnumbered pages; ‘‘Liga Foley Interviews,’’ Helen Holdredge Estate, 1939, 6, 24, and unnumbered pages; ‘‘Ledger 24: Interviews’’ (with Charlotte Downs, pp. 34–36; with John Allen Francis, Jr., pp. 50, 141, with Lane, pp. 90, 93). 19. Bibbs, Heritage of Power, 50–52, 66–70. 20. Long, email to the author, March 8, 1998; Long, ‘‘Collection on Marie LaVeau,’’ unpublished article from The Private Collection of Carolyn Long, housed in Washington, D.C.: 1997, 54; Fandrich, ‘‘The Mysterious Voodoo Queen,’’ 242, 251, 304; Fandrich, emails to the author, April 21, 1998; R. R. MacDonald et al., ‘‘Free People of Color,’’ Louisiana’s Black Heritage (New Orleans: Louisiana State Museum, 1979), 5, 8–14, 98–106. 21. Luisah Teish (Iyanifa Fajembola Fatunmise), interview by the author, 1997; Bibbs, Heritage of Power. 22. Testimony about Marie LaVeaux, Folio 25: The Federal Writer’s Project (Baton Rouge: N. Louisiana State University, 1930). 23. Folio 25; Teish, Carnival of the Spirit (HarperSanFrancisco, 1997), 143. 24. Troy Taylor, ‘‘Haunted New Orleans’’ (excerpt), 2000, http://www. prairieghosts.com/nohistory2.html; Long, email to the author, March 8, 1998; Long, ‘‘Collection on Marie LaVeau,’’ 54; Fandrich, ‘‘The Mysterious Voodoo Queen,’’ 3, 242, 251, 304; Fandrich, emails to the author, April 21, 1998; Mary Millan, email to the author, 1998; MacDonald et al., ‘‘Free People of Color,’’ 5, 8–14, 98–106; ‘‘Obituaries of Marie LaVeaux,’’in Times Picayunne and Press Democrat, June 17, 1881. 25. Katherine Dunham and Her People, Dance in America Series, Public Broadcasting, 1965; Veve Clark and Sarah E. Johnson, Eds., KAISO!: Writings By and About Katherine Dunham (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2006), 112, 424, 425, 625, 629. 26. Daniel explains how dance helps one to integrate this inner knowing and to invoke spirit: Yvonne Daniel, Dancing Wisdom (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004), 56; Drewal,Yoruba Ritual 12, xix.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abimbola, Wande. Ifa: An Exposition of Ifa Literary Corpus. Boston: Athelia Henrietta Press, 1997, 14, 18–25.

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Abimbola, Wande. Ifa Will Mend Our Broken World. Boston: Athelia Henrietta Press, 1997, 22, 33, 72, 83, 89, 106–7. Adams, Boniface. The Gift of Religious Leadership. New Orleans: Archdiocese Archives, 360–67. Asbury, Herbert. The French Quarter. NY: Garden City Publishing, 1938, 254. Awolalu, J. Omosade. Yoruba Beliefs and Sacrificial Rites. Athelia Henrietta Press, 1996, 5. Bascom, William.Ifa Divination. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1991, 3–8, 26. Bibbs, Susheel. Heritage of Power. San Francisco: M.E.P. Publications, 1998, 19–48, 50–52, 66–70. Bibbs, Susheel. The Legacies of Mary Ellen Pleasant. 1st ed. San Francisco: M.E.P. Publications, 1998. Blier, Patricia. African Vodun. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1995, 38–40. Bodin, Ron. Voodoo Past and Present. Lafayette: Center for Louisiana Studies, University of SW Louisiana. Brandon, George. Santeria from Africa to the New World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993, 13, 15, 18, 23. Brown, Karen McCarthy. Mama Lola. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001, 113, 215–17, 275–80, 320–26, 351, 352. Chinmayananda, H. H. Swami. The Bhagavad Gita. Bombay: Chinmaya Publications, 1984. Clark, Veve, and Sara E. Johnson, eds. KAISO!: Writings By and About Katherine Dunham. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 2005, 112, 424, 425, 625, 629. Courlander, Harold. Haiti Singing. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1939. Daniel, Yvonne. Dancing Wisdom. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2004. p. 56. Deren, Maya. Divine Horsemen. 2nd ed. Kingston, NY: McPherson and Co., 1970. Desmangles, Leslie. Faces of the Gods. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992, 2–11, 63–64, 75. Desrosiers, Toussaint. Haitian Vodou (New York: Ame´ricas 22-2), 35–39. Douglass, Frederick. ‘‘Learn Trades or Starve,’’ 1853. Excerpts reprinted in Lerone Bennett, Jr., Before the Mayflower. 6th ed. Chicago: Johnson Publications, 1988. Drewal, Margaret. Yoruba Ritual. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1984, xv, xix, 4. Epega, Afolabe A., and Phillip John Newark. The Sacred Ifa Oracle. Harper SanFrancisco, 1994.

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Fatunmbi, Awo Fa’Lokun. Awo. Bronx: Original Publications, 1992, 22, 23, 108–111. Fatunmbi, Awo Fa’Lokun. Iba’se Orisa. Bronx: Original Publications. 1994. Fatunmbi, Awo Fa’Lokun. Iwa Pele. Bronx: Original Publications, 1991, 8. Fatunmbi, Awo Fa’Lokun. Ori. Bronx: Original Publications. 2005 Galembo, Phyllis. Vodou. Berkeley: Ten Speed Press, 1998, xv. Haskins, Jim. Voodoo and Hoodoo. 2nd ed. Bronx: Original Publications, 1992. Herskovits, Melville, and Francis S. Herskovits. Dahomean Narrative. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1958. Hudson, Lynn. ‘‘John Brown.’’ In The Making of Mammy Pleasant. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2003. Hurbon, Laennec. Voodoo. Search for the Spirit. New York: Abrams Publishers, 1995, 13, 21, 31, 70–83, 108, 110–12, 113–15. Jones, Ava Kay. Principles of the Use of Gris Gris Bags. Potions and Dolls.New Orleans: Voodoo Macuumba, undated. Long, Carolyn M. A New Orleans Voudou Priestess. The Legend and Reality of Marie Laveau. Tallahassee: University Press of Florida, 2006. Long, Carolyn M. Spiritual Merchants. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2001, 37. MacDonald, R. R., et al. ‘‘Free People of Color.’’ In Louisiana’s Black Heritage. New Orleans: Louisiana State Museum, 1979, 5, 8–14, 98–106. McEvedy, Colin. The Penguin Atlas of African History. New York: Penguin Books, 1995, 38, 76. Metraux, Alfred. Voodoo in Haiti. New York: Schoken Books, 1972. Some´, Malidoma. Of Water and Spirit. New York: Penguin Books, 1994, 52, 53. Teish, Luisah (Iya Fajembola Fatunmise). Carnival of the Spirit. Harper SanFrancisco, 1997, 143. Teish, Luisah (Iya Fajembola Fatunmise). Jambalaya. HarperSanFrancisco, 1985, 111. Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit. New York: Vintage Books, 1984, 9–11, 16, 17. Thurman, Sue B. ‘‘Mary Ellen Pleasant.’’ In Pioneers of Negro Origin in California. San Francisco: Acme Press, 1949. Wheeler, B. Gordon. Black California. New York: Hippocrene Books, 1993, 89, 90.

ARCHIVAL DOCUMENTS Campbell Ave. Property Deed. Chatham (West), Ontario: Chatham-Kent Land Authority. 1858. 1872.

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Cincinnati Census: 1810, p. 32; 1820, p. 87. City Directories. New Orleans Public Library History Room, 1805–1881. Davis, Sam P. ‘‘Letter to Mary Pleasant.’’ Los Angeles: MEP/Davis-Crowell Estate, March 17, 1902. Gardner, Thomas. ‘‘Letter to Olive Sherwood.’’ Vallejo, CA: Delaca Estate, 1906. Gardner, William C. ‘‘Letter to Mary Ellen Pleasant.’’ Vallejo, CA: Delaca Estate, November 7, 1858, November 23, 1863 [postscript]. ‘‘The Insolvency Papers of Mary Pleasant.’’ Vallejo, CA: The Delaca Estate, May 11, 1899. Long, Carolyn M. ‘‘Collection on Marie LaVeau.’’ Unpublished article from The Private Collection of Carolyn Long. Housed in Washington, D.C.: 1997, 54. New Orleans Archdiocese Archives. Vital/Cemetery Records, c/o Dr. Nolan, 1819–1881. ‘‘The Papers of Thomas Bell.’’ Bancroft Library. Berkeley. CA: University of California at Berkeley. Philadelphia Archdiocese. Cemetery records pertaining to Mary Ellen Pleasant’s parentage, sent to author February 1994. Pleasant, Mary Ellen. ‘‘Letter Dictated to Mrs. S [Sherwood].’’ Six-page fragment. Vallejo, CA: Delaca Estate, undated. Pleasant, Mary Ellen. ‘‘Letter to Sam P. Davis.’’ Los Angeles: Davis-Crowell Estate, March 17, 1902. Pleasant, Mary Ellen. Memoir. Emma Kaiser, scribe. Vallejo, CA: Delaca Estate, 1880, 1, 8. Pleasant, Mary Ellen. Memoir. Sam P. Davis, scribe. Los Angeles: MEP/DavisCrowell Estate, 1901, 1–5. Pleasant, Mary Ellen. ‘‘Second Marriage.’’ In Memoir. Sam P. Davis, scribe. Los Angeles: MEP/Davis-Crowell Estate, 1902, 1, 3. San Francisco Census. The Bell Household. Ward 12, 1890, p. 126. San Francisco City Directories: 1859, 1863. Ships Passage Records. Vol. 3. San Francisco Main Public Library, 137–140. ‘‘Ships Passage Records.’’ The Helen Holdredge ‘‘Mammy Pleasant’’ Collection, ‘‘Ledger 26.’’ San Francisco Public Library History Room, p. 4/27/21. ‘‘Ships Passage Records.’’ Press Democrat and Times Picayunne. New Orleans: Microfiche, 1790–1881. Testimony about Marie LaVeaux, Folio 25: The Federal Writer’s Project (Baton Rouge: N. Louisiana State University, 1930).

INTERVIEWS AND LECTURE NOTES Atanda, Chief Aare Olalekan. ‘‘Ifa.’’ San Francisco: Center for African and African-American Culture, November 4. 1998. Lecture notes by the author.

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Fandrich, Ina. Emails/phone-conference notes to the author, October 1997 through May 1998. Fatunmbi, Awa Fa’Lokun. Interviews by the author, 1998. 1994, 1998. Holdredge, Helen. ‘‘Charlotte Downs’ Interviews.’’ Los Angeles: Helen Holdredge Estate, 1930, 6, 10, 11, and unnumbered pages. Holdredge, Helen. ‘‘Ledger 24: Interviews’’ (with Harold Camba, Charlotte Downs, John Allen Francis, Jr., Mrs. [?] Lane, Atty. John L. McNab, Lucy Ritzman, David Ruggles, Jr., and William Willmore, Jr.). The Helen Holdredge ‘‘Mammy Pleasant’’ Collection. San Francisco History Room, San Francisco Main Public Library. Holdredge, Helen. ‘‘Ledger 25: Interviews’’ (with Vina Dyer). The Helen Holdredge ‘‘Mammy Pleasant’’ Collection. San Francisco History Room, San Francisco Main Public Library. Holdredge, Helen. ‘‘Ledger 26: Interviews’’ (with Atty. Eduard Bergner, Charlotte Downs, and William Willmore, Jr.). The Helen Holdredge ‘‘Mammy Pleasant’’ Collection. San Francisco History Room, San Francisco Main Public Library. Holdredge, Helen. ‘‘Ledger 56: Interview’’ (with William Willmore, Jr.). The Helen Holdredge ‘‘Mammy Pleasant’’ Collection. San Francisco History Room, San Francisco Main Public Library. Holdredge, Helen. ‘‘Liga Foley Interviews.’’ Los Angeles: Helen Holdredge Estate, 1939, 24 and unnumbered pages. Long, Carolyn M. Emails to the author, October 1997 through May 1998. Maes-Valdez, Xochipala (Iyanifa Fakayode). Interview by the author, 1998. McGlone, Robert E. Phone interview by the author, 1955. Millan, Mary. Email/phone interviews by the author, 1998. Osumare, Halifu. Interview by the author, 2006. Osumare, Halifu. ‘‘The Aesthetic of the Cool.’’ U.C. Berkeley: Diaspora Conference, April 1998. Lecture notes by the author. Saraswati, H. H. Swami Dayananda. ‘‘The Bhagavad Gita.’’ Mumbai, India: Sandeepany Sadhanalaya. 1978. Lecture notes by the author. Teish, Luisah (Iyanifa Fa’jembola). Interviews by the author, 1993, 1997, 2006.

NEWSPAPERS AND JOURNAL ARTICLES Davis, Sam P. ‘‘Autobiography of Mary Ellen Pleasant. Part 1.’’ Pandex of the Press (San Francisco, 1902): 1. Davis, Sam P. ‘‘How a Colored Woman Aided John Brown.’’ Comfort Magazine (November 1903): 3. Dorsey, Lilith. ‘‘Interview with Carlos Montenegro.’’ Oshun 3, No. 2 (Summer 1998): 5–7.

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Fraser, Isobel. ‘‘Mammy Pleasant. The Woman.’’ The SF Call (December 29, 2001): 2. Geggus, David. ‘‘Haitian Voodoo in the Eighteenth Century: Language. Culture. Resistence.’’ Jarbuch fur Geschichte von Staadt. Wirkschaft und Gesellschaft Lateinamerikas 28 (1991): 8–13. Hamilton, James C. ‘‘John Brown in Canada.’’ Canadian Magazine (December 1894): 8. LeBlanc, Joyce. ‘‘Strange Rumblings in the Night.’’ Journal Unknown. New Orleans: Amistad Collection. Tulane University. ‘‘The Life Story of Mammy Pleasance.’’ San Francisco Examiner. October 13, 1895, 17. Nevadomsky, Joseph. ‘‘The Initiation of a Priestess: Olokun Initiation.’’ Journal Unknown (1998): 206. Courtesy of Luisah Teish, Oakland, CA. Obituaries of Marie LaVeaux. Times Picayunne and Press Democrat. June 17, 1881. Obituary of Marie LaVeaux. Weekly Picayune. June 17, 1881. Touchstone, Blake. ‘‘Voodoo in New Orleans.’’ Louisiana History 13, No. 4 (Fall 1972).

UNPUBLISHED WORKS Fandrich, Ina. ‘‘The Mysterious Voodoo Queen. Marie LaVeaux.’’ PhD diss. Temple University, 1994, 2, 15, 18, 242, 251, 260, 266, 304. Long, Carolyn M. Untitled. Laveau Collection: Washington, D.C., 1997, 54. McBratney, M. ‘‘Honoring and Initiation of the Priestess in Post Modern-day Society.’’ Master’s thesis. University of Creation Spirituality, 1998, 24.

COMPUTER AND MEDIA SOURCES Bibbs, Susheel. Meet Mary Pleasant. Documentary film. Sacramento: M.E.P. Productions, 2007. http://www.mepleasant.com/film.html. Bibbs, Susheel. Meet Mary Pleasant DVD Archive. Video interviews by the author with Louis De Caro (New York), Francis Kartunnen (Nantucket, MA), Jean Libby (Palo Alto, CA), Lovinsky, Alourdes (Mama Lola), David Oppenheimer (San Francisco), Gwendolyn Robinson (Chatham, Ontario),and Helen Seagar (Nantucket). Oakland: The African-America Museum and Library at Oakland, 2003, 2008. Bibbs, Susheel. Vodou Archive. Video interviews by the author with Luisah Teish, Ava Kay Jones, Gerald Gandolfo, Awo Fa’Lokun Fatumnbi, Elmer Glover, Coco Miriam, Brandi Kelley, and Mary Millan, 1997. Hall, Gwendolyn. ‘‘In Search of the Invisible Africans.’’ Louisiana Slave Database (1723–1820), 1998.

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In Search of History—Voodoo Secrets. Documentary film. The History Channel, 1998, #AAE-74036. Katherine Dunham and Her People. Dance in America Series. Public Broadcasting System, 1965. Rock, Michael. ‘‘Haitian Vodou: Serving the Spirits,’’ June 1, 2003, http://www .witchvox.com/va/dt_va.html?a=ustx&c=trads&id=6325. Taylor, Troy. ‘‘Haunted New Orleans’’ (excerpt), 2000. http://www.prairieghosts .com/nohistory2.html.

P ART III

Mind, Body, and Spirit

CHAPTER

5

Serving the Spirits, Healing the Person: Women in Afro-Brazilian Religions Kelly E. Hayes

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omen have played a central role in the historical development and diffusion of Afro-Brazilian religions, and they continue to comprise the majority of participants today. These religions provide a space in which women’s experiences and concerns are central, and activities that traditionally have been assigned to women, such as food preparation, caregiving, and healing, have religious significance. Because most AfroBrazilian religions are structured as alternative families, they provide a model of the world in which motherhood serves as an important route to and metaphor of religious leadership. While men are not absent—indeed, in many communities, certain ritual activities are restricted to men—on the whole, Afro-Brazilian religions are examples of what Susan Starr Sered termed ‘‘female-dominated religions.’’1 These are religions that: (a) include women at the highest levels of leadership; (b) focus on women as ritual actors; and, (c) find sacred meaning in women’s traditional social roles as mothers, domestic workers, nurturers, and caregivers. After outlining the general features of Afro-Brazilian religions, I discuss Candomble´ and Umbanda, the two most well-known forms. For each I give a brief history, followed by an overview of the organizational structure and ritual life. Finally, I consider one woman’s journey from affliction to healing within the Afro-Brazilian context, drawing on my own ethnographic fieldwork in Rio de Janeiro.

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This example illustrates the interrelationships of mind, body, and spirit in Afro-Brazilian religions and suggests some of the reasons why women constitute the majority of practitioners. The term ‘‘Afro-Brazilian religions’’ refers to a broad spectrum of beliefs and practices that developed in Brazil in the context and aftermath of Atlantic slavery. Brazil received more African slaves than any other New World colony, at least 3.65 million before the institution was finally abolished in 1888, more than nine times the number imported to the United States.2 Afro-Brazilian religions were born out of the trauma of slavery, as Africans brought to Brazil attempted to understand and survive the harsh realities of their new lives. Drawing on the memories of their ancestral traditions as well as other spiritual systems (Catholicism, indigenous healing practices, European Spiritualism), slaves and their Brazilian-born descendents adapted, modified, and incorporated whatever elements facilitated their physical and psychic survival. From this bricolage emerged regionally distinct modes of religious expression centered on service to ancestral or spiritual entities, emotional worship, percussive music, song, movement, and healing. Called Pajelanc¸a or Catimbo´ in Amazoˆ nia, Candomble´ in Bahia, Tambor-de-mina in Maranha˜o, Xangoˆ in Alagoas and Pernambuco, Umbanda or Macumba in Rio de Janeiro, and Batuque in Rio Grande do Sul, these African-derived religions flourished and spread, despite the efforts of Brazilian authorities and the Catholic Church to suppress them as illegitimate forms of black magic. Today they attract Brazilians from across the socioeconomic spectrum, although poor and working class followers tend to predominate. One of the most distinctive characteristics of Afro-Brazilian religions is their eclecticism. These are religions that resist systematization, either by scholars or census takers. Like Vodou, Santeria, and other traditions that developed in the slave societies of the New World, Afro-Brazilian religions are organized around independent ‘‘houses’’ or communities, each with its own heritage and pantheon of supernatural powers. There is no universally recognized institution that determines doctrine, trains clerics, or enforces standards of ritual practice. Neither is there a formal creed or standardized set of beliefs that must be espoused by participants. This makes it difficult to point to a certain set of beliefs or rituals as defining criteria. Nevertheless, Afro-Brazilian religions do share a religious sensibility, or orientation to the Universe, derived from their West and Central African roots: a. the notion that the human and spiritual worlds are mutually interdependent and in constant interaction; b. the importance of the human body as a privileged means through which the spiritual world is made manifest;

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c. the special role of rhythm, movement, music, song, dance, material offerings and objects; d. an emphasis on healing and the resolution of pragmatic problems; e. the use of diverse therapeutic techniques for purification and spiritual protection, including herbal treatments, offerings, prayers, censing with smoke, incantations, amulets, and so forth; f. the importance of oral tradition and ritual, rather than sacred text, as the mode of transmitting religious knowledge.

At the heart of all Afro-Brazilian religions is a concern with alleviating suffering and realizing well-being by fortifying the links between the human and the spiritual worlds. While practitioners recognize the Christian God, they believe that this God interacts with human beings through spiritual intermediaries. Afro-Brazilian religions recognize a variety of such supernatural beings, including Catholic saints (santos), African deities associated with natural phenomena and familial lineages (orixa´s or voduns), ancestral figures (inquices), archetypal folk characters such as the spirits of elderly black slaves (pretos velhos), indigenous Indians (caboclos), and street smart tricksters (exus and pomba giras), as well as the spirits of the deceased (eguns). Through an elaborate body of myths, rituals, songs, symbols, offerings, movements, and gestures, participants seek to understand and organize their lives in relationship to these supernatural entities. There is no developed notion of sin or a need for salvation. In the Afro-Brazilian world view, human beings are embedded within complex webs of rights and responsibilities that situate them in relation to the natural world of family, community, and the environment, and to the supernatural world of spiritual beings. Well-being is the product of a dynamic state of equilibrium between these worlds and results when ties of commitment and reciprocity are acknowledged through ritual means, facilitating the continuous flow of spiritual energy through the Universe. This concept of dynamic equilibrium through ritual work is expressed in the notion of service, a central value in Afro-Brazilian religions. Through their offerings, ceremonies, feasts, and other devotional activities, practitioners ‘‘serve’’ the spirits, enjoying in return the active presence of the spirits in their lives. When properly served, spirits offer guidance, protection, and practical assistance to their human devotees. When neglected, they can provoke persistent physiological, psychological, economic, or personal problems including bad luck, adversity, and interpersonal difficulties, as well as chronic illnesses such as headache, fatigue, loss of appetite, dizziness, and blackouts. Most participants join Afro-Brazilian religious groups in search of a resolution for these types of problems. Healing involves addressing the physiological, emotional, social and, most importantly, the spiritual dimensions of

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the individual’s particular affliction. For example, an individual suffering from persistent headaches may be treated with a mix of herbal remedies, talk therapy, and highly symbolic ritual processes designed to externalize the problem, fortify the individual’s relationship with patron spirits, and incorporate them into the larger religious community. Within the framework of Afro-Brazilian religions, the root cause of most human suffering lies in an imbalance in the individual’s relationship to the spirit world and may be resolved by strengthening her or his relationship with that world. This is not to say that Afro-Brazilian healers ignore the physiological causes of illness, but that they understand human well-being as encompassing body, mind, and spirit. Sometimes an individual’s problem is determined to be a spirit who is demanding recognition by causing blackouts or other types of behavioral disturbances. In these cases, healing involves a protracted process of training under the guidance of a religious specialist in which the afflicted learns how to serve the spirit by ritually receiving it in possession trance. When regularly incorporated in the context of ceremonial rituals, spirits are believed to cease their disruptions and to actively assist followers in achieving their goals. Perhaps the most dramatic example of the intimate relationship between the human and supernatural worlds, spirit possession is a central feature of all Afro-Brazilian religions. In this form of embodied spirituality, supernatural beings are made present within the human community in the bodies of their devotees, who claim to remember little or nothing of the experience. Although not all are capable of serving the spirits in this way, those who do are highly valued within Afro-Brazilian religious groups as direct channels to the supernatural world. Because of its spectacular aspects, spirit possession has received a great deal of attention from scholars and outsiders. For followers, however, it is an ordinary feature of religious life, one of many forms of service to the spirits. Spirit possession generally occurs in special ceremonies held on regular occasions. Ritually summoned from their otherworldly abode through rhythm, music, song, and dance, the spirits are invited to ‘‘mount’’ their devotees. Once incorporated, the spirits dance, sing, or confer with the faithful who have assembled to receive them, blessing the community with their presence. The atmosphere on these occasions is one of festive celebration, and ceremonies typically attract large audiences of onlookers who come for entertainment or to petition a particular spirit entity for help in resolving a problem.

CANDOMBLE´ The most self-consciously African of the Afro-Brazilian religions, Candomble´ centers on the relationships between humans and West African-derived

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deities called orixa´s. Signifying simultaneously the historical link to Africa and African ancestral traditions, the orixa´s are also incarnations of natural forces: wind, rain, thunder, forest, ocean, river, etc., as well as important cultural activities such as ironworking and hunting. Some, like the thunder god Xangoˆ, are royal figures that recall the ancient kings who ruled over the Yoruba city-states from which many slaves originated. Others, like the orixa´ of disease Obaluaie´ (also known as Omolu, Zagpata, Xapana˜) are compound figures merging deities originally belonging to different ethnic groups. Each orixa´ has a specific personality, set of likes, dislikes, and ritual preferences, as well as associated colors, days of the week, minerals, and plants. These attributes are communicated orally through a vast corpus of stories and songs, bodily through expressive dance, visually through complex altars and ritual vestments, and sensually through special foods, herbs, and offerings particular to each orixa´. Because of its obvious African roots, some scholars and practitioners describe Candomble´ as a purely African tradition brought to Brazil by slaves and preserved by their descendents. However, it is better understood as a New World creation that combines the ancestral traditions of peoples of West and Central Africa, who comprised the majority of the slaves sent to Brazil, with Amerindian and folk Catholic elements characteristic of the colonial milieu in which it developed. As occurred in other slave colonies of the New World, enslaved Africans in Brazil associated their own deities with specific Catholic saints, seeing the warrior Saint George, for example, as an incarnation of the West African warrior god Ogum. Such identifications were facilitated by the legends and iconographic images of the saints that were a prominent feature of Portuguese folk Catholicism. To this day, Catholic statues and images are prominently displayed in many Candomble´ centers, and public ceremonies for the orixa´s typically occur on or near the feast day of their corresponding saint. The historical record, although sketchy, suggests that Candomble´ initially developed within organized networks of slaves and freed blacks in the northeastern city of Salvador, Bahia in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Brought together by their shared experience of oppression, these blacks founded ritual communities (terreiros) that preserved an alternative heritage and system of values rooted in the memory of Africa. Despite a history of persecution, this memory has been kept alive in a corpus of myths, dances, and songs, a sophisticated culinary and healing tradition, and a complex system of symbols through which Candomble´ practitioners honor their links to a cherished homeland. As privileged repositories of these traditions, women have played important roles in the incarnation and transmission of this ancestral past to future generations.

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HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Our knowledge of Candomble´’s early development is complicated by the lack of unbiased historical sources. While whites wrote about the religious traditions of slaves and freed blacks, they saw them as primitive superstition at best. More commonly, white authorities described these African-derived practices as dangerous black magic that threatened the social order and required the combined resources of the Portuguese government and the Catholic Church to combat. As a result, the only descriptions of AfroBrazilian religions before the end of the nineteenth century were recorded in inquisitional proceedings, police reports, and lurid newspaper accounts that purported to expose the demonic activities of black sorcerers. Despite their obvious bias, these sources show that communal worship, rhythm and music, material offerings, protective amulets, and herbal preparations were central features of black spirituality. They suggest that throughout the period of slavery and afterwards, Africans and their Brazilian descendents met clandestinely in domestic spaces and remote areas of difficult access to conduct ceremonies in which they remembered their past and called upon their ancestors for support. These collective ceremonies included ecstatic forms of devotion, drumming, dancing, and rituals of healing and propitiation. Judging by the outrage of Church officials, they also incorporated elements of folk Catholic practice including representations of the saints and other liturgical objects—even on occasion pilfered holy water and Eucharist wafers. These clandestine drum and dance ceremonies, referred to by authorities as calundus or batuques, eventually developed into organized Candomble´ terreiros (ritual communities) in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. According to Candomble´ historian Rachel Harding, the earliest of these terreiros were founded by Africans and devoted to the ancestral deities of specific African ethnic groups or ‘‘nations,’’ but by the middle of the nineteenth century a pan-Africanizing process had begun to take place as Africans and their Brazilian-born descendents forged new collective identities linked less to a specific ethnicity than to their shared experience of oppression.3 In terms of its organizational structure and ritual life, Candomble´ both reflected and facilitated the formation of this pan-African identity. Where slavery had ruptured the bonds of family and lineage, Candomble´ terreiros established ties of ritual kinship linked to shared devotion rather than biology or culture of origin. Terreiros brought together deities that in Africa were worshipped by specific family lineages or ethnic groups, further blurring differences of ethnicity. By the end of the nineteenth century, the various Candomble´ nations differed from one another in terms of their adherence to a particular spiritual tradition, rather than the ethnic ancestry of their members.

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From early on, women played important roles in the process of remembering and recreating the community’s connection to the ancestors as ialorixa´ s, or mothers of the orixa´ s. Called ma˜ e-de-santo in Portuguese, the ialorixa´ is the chief female authority within a terreiro, whose ritual knowledge enables the orixa´s to be summoned by their children in the New World. Several of the most prominent terreiros established in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were founded by women, a fact that led the American anthropologist Ruth Landes to describe Candomble´ as a matriarchy.4 Working in the racially stratified and male-dominated Brazil of the late 1930s, Landes was especially impressed by the power and independence of black women in Candomble´. She was one of the first scholars to explicitly acknowledge the centrality of women in Candomble´, a phenomenon she linked to the religion’s development within the female-centered households of black Bahia. At the time, Landes’s work was harshly criticized by her more prominent male colleagues, but subsequent scholarship has verified many of her observations. Since then, a number of scholars and practitioners have explained the predominance of women in Candomble´ in terms of ‘‘natural mothering qualities’’ that make women especially suited to care for the orixa´s and the human community called to their service. Like a mother, the ma˜e-de-santo is responsible for ensuring the health and welfare of all who are under her care. As one adherent put it, the mother figure is ‘‘the person who is most sought after . . . . People are needy and women are more compassionate than men.’’ 5 Others have argued that because the work of serving the orixa´s involves many of the domestic tasks of cleaning, food preparation, and caregiving traditionally performed by women, it is the structure of Candomble´ that accounts for the predominance of women rather than any innately female qualities. The importance placed on cheerful obedience and submission to authority, behaviors that traditionally are associated with femininity, may also play a role. Through her obedience and submission, a woman can rise through Candomble´’s hierarchical ranks and achieve a level of prestige, authority, power, and self-esteem that otherwise may be unavailable to her. Despite the prominence of women, however, men are not absent. Both men and women are fundamental to the ritual life of Candomble´, for each has a special role to play within the community.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND RITUAL LIFE Candomble´ terreiros are organized as alternative families (famı´lia-desanto) whose members are related through the orixa´ (often called saint or santo) via bonds established by ritual rather than blood. Initiation is the gateway into the community, creating ‘‘children of saint’’(filhos-de-santo),

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who owe obeisance to the ‘‘mother of saint’’ (ma˜e-de-santo) or ‘‘father of saint’’ (pai-de-santo) who initiated them and to the orixa´ to whom they were consecrated. The process of initiation consists of an elaborate series of rituals whose purpose is to deepen the initiate’s relationship with the orixa´ determined to be his or her primary spiritual guide, as well as to forge ritual bonds with other members of the community. As one analyst described it, initiation ‘‘allows one to identify with certainty one’s spiritual guide as well as to become familiar with one’s own deep nature and truest impulses. By strengthening the link with this guardian orixa´, the individual becomes receptive to and behaves in harmony with him or her and benefits from the spiritual force that the orixa´ represents.’’6 It is not until the individual is initiated that she is considered a full member of the community and can take her place within the fixed hierarchy that structures life within a terreiro. Ritual responsibilities in Candomble´ are divided according to each individual’s age ‘‘in the saint,’’ their gender, and the gender of the orixa´ who ‘‘rules their head.’’ At the top of the hierarchy is the ma˜e-de-santo (ialorixa´) or pai-desanto (babalorixa´), whose authority is absolute and acquired in the course of a series of successive initiations and the fulfillment of various obligations (obrigac¸o˜es) to the orixa´s. Second in command is the iyakekere or ma˜e pequena, ‘‘small mother,’’ a senior woman who serves as assistant to the leader and is responsible for the care of new initiates during the period of their seclusion, among other duties. She is recruited from the class of ebomin or ‘‘elder siblings,’’ senior male and female initiates who have completed seven or more years of consecration to the orixa´s. An ebomin’s experience allows her to establish her own terreiro if the orixa´s call upon her to do so. Iaoˆs or ‘‘wives’’ of the orixa´s are initiates, either male or female, who have been ritually prepared to incarnate the orixa´s in possession trance but who have not yet reached the stage of ebomin. Finally, the most junior members of a terreiro are the abia˜s who have undergone preliminary rituals of spiritual fortification but have not been fully initiated. Like the iaoˆs, abia˜s can be male or female, although women tend to outnumber men in Candomble´ communities. These differences in status are communicated through dress, style of greeting, ritual duties, and privileges that are specific to each class, within an overarching hierarchy that regulates all relationships within the community. Ritual positions within the terreiro are also gender-specific. One of the most important roles in any terreiro is the iabasse´ or ‘‘mother who cooks,’’ the woman responsible for preparing the ceremonial foods of the orixa´s. Each orixa´ has special dishes that must be scrupulously prepared and consecrated before being ritually presented at ceremonial feasts to the orixa´s and the community. Like the Christian rite of communion, these sacred meals bring followers into contact with divine power through the ingestion of consecrated foods. With its associations to nourishment, sustenance, and

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fellowship, the symbolism of shared food is an important way in which the interdependence of the natural, human, and spirit worlds is made manifest in Candomble´.7 The iabasse´’s culinary skills and ritual knowledge connect the community with the orixa´s and preserve a rich gastronomic tradition that continually reminds members of their African heritage. Equedes are initiated women who serve as ritual assistants. Because they do not incorporate the orixa´s, equedes are responsible for making sure that entranced iaoˆs are not injured from the force of the orixa´ entering or leaving their bodies, among other duties. Men serve the orixa´s and the community as oga˜s, initiated assistants who advise and protect the community; alabeˆs or ritual drummers whose rhythms beckon the orixa´s to join their human devotees; and axoˆguns responsible for the ritual slaughter of sacrificial animals. Initiated members of a Candomble´ terreiro are further distinguished by the gender of their primary orixa´. Within the community’s ceremonial life, male and female orixa´s are differentiated through subtleties of gesture and adornment such as the placement of the colar, or ritual beads worn by initiates, and the type of ritual prostration performed as a gesture of respect. A complex system defines each member’s position within the Candomble´ community and specifies their obligations to one another and to the spirits. The gender of the initiate and that of his or her patron orixa´ are important elements of this system, the guiding principles of which are conveyed in the process of initiation. The scrupulous observance of these fundamentos, or esoteric codes of ritual practice, ensures the constant flow of axe´, the spiritual force without which life would cease. At the most basic level, maximizing the axe´ of the terreiro and its members is the raison d’eˆ tre of Candomble´, and a leader’s authority derives from her ritual knowledge and ability to channel axe´. Sometimes translated as energy or vital force, axe´ is believed to be present in different forms in everything that exists, including inert objects like rocks and minerals. It is most abundant in the blood and organs of animals and the leaves and roots of plants, which, as concentrated forms of axe´, are central in Candomble´ rituals. Through their offerings, feasts, and the observation of fundamentos and obrigac¸o˜es (ritual obligations), practitioners activate the cycles of exchange between the human and spirit worlds increasing the axe´ of the community. The most spectacular of these obrigac¸o˜es is the annual cycle of devotional festas or feasts in which each of the major orixa´s is honored in an elaborate ceremony open to the public. These feasts involve the entire community and require a great deal of time and effort as the members prepare to host not only the orixa´s but the crowds of spectators and well-wishers who regularly attend. Depending on the terreiro, they may be held anywhere from six to twelve times a year or more.

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Most follow the same general pattern. After a series of opening rituals, the community summons the orixa´s one by one, enticing them into their midst through rhythm, music, and song. As the drummers play the sacred rhythms, the iaoˆs, dressed in white and draped with the colorful beads dedicated to their patron orixa´s enter the room in single file, forming the characteristic roda or circle in which they will dance for the orixa´s. Each orixa´ is saluted in a determined order with three to seven songs, during the course of which they may descend to possess their devotees. Accompanying the drums with the emblematic dance steps unique to each orixa´, the iaoˆs offer themselves to the manifestation of their patron orixa´. They are attended by the equedes, who, once the orixa´ arrives, will remove any jewelry and readjust the iaoˆ’s headscarf, often knocked askew from the force of the possession. After dancing around the room several times before the animated crowd, the entranced iaoˆ s are led to a back room where they will be dressed in the elaborate ritual vestments of their possessing orixa´. After a short time, the iaoˆs return, now clad in the colorful regalia that identifies their particular orixa´. Their appearance, as one observer wrote, ‘‘is like a burst of light, dazzling and multifaceted. The polished crowns and instruments, and bright silks and satins of the garments, augmented by the rhythmic propulsions of the drums startle the senses to appreciate the epiphany of the orixa´s among the congregation.’’8 Each orixa´ has a unique dance that illustrates some aspect of personality: the wind goddess Iansa˜ swirls vigorously as if caught in the tempestuous winds of a storm, the sea goddess Yemanja´ moves her arms in a stately, rolling motion that recalls the ebb and flow of ocean waves, Omolu sweeps away disease with his xaxara´, a small, whisk-like broom. These dances are a central part of Candomble´ for they are the means through which the orixa´ s are made manifest in the human world, and their individual stories are communicated to their followers. After several hours in which the orixa´s dance and are admired by the congregation, the drums begin to beat the rhythms that will send them back to their spiritual abode. Each circles the congregation for a final time and then is led away to a back room. There the orixa´s will be ritually dispatched from the bodies of the iaoˆs. The formal ceremony ends at this point, and the gathered congregation will enjoy the feast that has been prepared, each morsel infused with the spiritual energy of the orixa´s. With the successful completion of this obrigac¸a˜o, the axe´ of the terreiro and all its members has been renewed and their links to the ancestral traditions of their forebears publicly reaffirmed. Festas such as these are a visible and dramatic form of service to the spirits, but terreiros also serve a larger community by providing counseling,

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healing, and other forms of therapy. A significant portion of any leader’s time is spent in consultations with clients suffering from a range of problems. Using the divination technique called jogo-de-bu´zios, or the throwing of the shells, the ma˜e- or pai-de-santo will determine the origin of the client’s problem and the appropriate course of its resolution. Often this involves herbal treatments, spiritual ‘‘cleansings,’’ or more complex ritual services intended to strengthen the individual’s relationship with her or his patron orixa´. More serious problems may require initiation, a multistage process that eventually transforms the client into a full filho-de-santo. Consultations are an important way that clients and potential members enter the Candomble´ community and advance through the ranks, first as abia˜s, then as iaoˆs, and later as ebomins and eventually ialorixa´s or babalorixa´s. The progression from novice to junior wife to elder sibling to mother- or father-of-the-saints is a process of spiritual development that occurs as the individual deepens her knowledge of Candomble´ through participation in the ritual life of a terreiro and the completion of obrigac¸o˜es, becoming exposed to ever more esoteric levels of the religion. Only at the level of ialorixa´ does the individual possess the spiritual knowledge and ritual competency to help others along the path that she has trod, beginning the cycle anew.

UMBANDA While Candomble´ focuses on the orixa´s and the preservation of ancestral traditions associated with Africa, Umbanda embraces an eclectic repertoire of spirit entities drawn from various traditions. Because of its synthesis of African, European, and Amerindian elements, the legendary three races that coalesced to form the Brazilian people, practitioners sometimes characterize Umbanda as the country’s first truly original religion. Like all Afro-Brazilian religions, Umbanda is a diverse movement composed of independent ritual communities, each with its own devotional life, pantheon of spirit entities, and organizational structure. What unites these communities is a concern with addressing the spiritual dimensions of human affliction through the practice of mediumship, and a shared understanding of the Universe derived from the theories of the nineteenth-century French philosopher Allen Kardec. Although they had little influence in his native land, Kardec’s theories found a receptive audience among educated Brazilian elites. Based on his ‘‘scientific’’ analysis of paranormal phenomena, Kardec claimed that he had derived the principles of a new philosophy he called Spiritism. Central to Spiritism was the claim that after death the human soul lived on in disembodied, spirit form before being reincarnated on earth in either a more evolved or less evolved human form. By performing good deeds and studying

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Kardecist doctrine, a human soul could evolve along a spiritual hierarchy, eventually becoming a ‘‘spirit of light,’’ or guide (guia), no longer subject to reincarnation. Through a trained medium, these evolved spirit guides transmitted moral instruction and spiritual healing to those in need. Conversely, negative or immoral conduct resulted in regression to a lower level on the spirit hierarchy, and eventual rebirth in a less-evolved human form. Lowerlevel ‘‘spirits of the shadows’’ could attach themselves to people and provoke problems such as alcoholism, drug abuse, accidents, and other misfortunes. Mediums were those individuals specially trained to communicate with spirits and to diagnose and treat spirit ailments. From Spiritism, Umbanda inherited the notion of a hierarchical universe made up of a series of spirit entities arrayed on an evolutionary continuum. These range from the most developed entities who rarely descend to the terrestrial realm: Jesus Christ, the spirits of great European philosophers, and the African orixa´s; to a series of lesser-developed entities: the spirits of African slaves (pretos velhos) and indigenous Indians (caboclos); and finally to the least-developed entities: the spirits of children (ereˆs), street savvy hustlers (exus), prostitutes (pomba giras), and the dead (eguns). Some Umbanda centers recognize in addition the spirits of gypsies (ciganas), sailors (marinheiros), cowboys (boiadeiros), and other marginal social types. Practitioners often describe these lesser-developed ‘‘spirits of the shadows’’ as lacking ‘‘light’’ (sem luz), a characteristic that results from their more primitive rank on the evolutionary continuum. Within Umbanda, spirits may evolve and eventually reach the upper echelons through the performance of charity (cariedade), occasioned by the help they render to humans who come to consult them in Umbanda rituals (toques). This process sometimes is referred to as ‘‘indoctrination’’ or ‘‘baptism.’’ Through an intermediary (medium), who either incarnates them or translates their messages, indoctrinated spirits are thought to work on behalf of their human supplicants, recipients of the charity that will lead to the spirits’ own evolutions. While Umbanda practitioners may acknowledge the orixa´s with offerings of food, drink, flowers, and candles, most focus their ritual attention on lower-level spirits, particularly caboclos, pretos velhos, exus and pomba giras, who because of their own difficult experiences while on Earth are thought to understand the sufferings of their human devotees and to possess the spiritual resources to help them. Incorporated in the body of a medium, these spirits return to Earth to ‘‘consult’’ with petitioners and to execute a variety of spiritual cures. Both men and women serve as mediums in Umbanda, although women tend to outnumber men. While some attribute this to women’s greater sensitivity, there is little developed sense that innate female traits predispose women to serve the spirits, as is sometimes asserted in Candomble´. Rather all humans

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are believed to possess the ability to become mediums and to work for the spiritual evolution of all beings.

HISTORICAL OVERVIEW Historians concur that Umbanda emerged sometime in the first three decades of the twentieth century in the southeastern cities of Rio de Janeiro and Porto Alegre. Although there is probably no one original center from which Umbanda sprang, scholars and practitioners often invoke the story of Ze´lio de Moraes. Like most origin narratives, Ze´lio’s is replete with highly symbolic and mythological aspects, and exists in various versions. Nevertheless, it indicates some of the formative issues in the development of Umbanda. While attending a service at a Spiritist center in Rio de Janeiro sometime in the 1920s, Ze´lio de Moraes witnessed mediums being possessed by the spirits of black slaves (pretos velhos) and Indians (caboclos). Within Kardec’s hierarchical framework these spirits were considered unevolved due to the cultural level of their previous lives, and were promptly dispatched. Ze´lio then felt himself taken over by one of these entities, who announced that he would begin his own religion dedicated to the humble spirits of Brazil’s black slaves and original inhabitants. In the mid-1920s, Ze´lio founded the Spiritist Center of Our Lady of Piety on the outskirts of the city of Rio de Janeiro and dedicated it to the caboclo spirit that had first possessed him.9 Whether or not this represents the ‘‘true’’ historical origins of Umbanda, ´ Zelio’s story suggests the centrality of class and race in the formation of Umbanda and in its relationship with Spiritism, which was practiced mostly by middle- and upper-class whites. With its pantheon of caboclos, pretos velhos, and other marginalized social types, Umbanda presents a populist vision of Brazilian social life. At the same time, the tension between this vision and the dominant elite’s antipathy towards its nation’s African and indigenous heritage runs throughout the history of Umbanda. So while Umbanda in many ways represents a synthesis of Kardecist principles and popular AfroBrazilian practices, from early on prominent practitioners were concerned about distancing Umbanda from the ‘‘black barbarism’’ of Brazil’s Africanderived traditions. In 1941, Ze´lio and his male associates, nearly all of whom were white and middle class, organized the first Umbanda conference in order to define a uniform code of doctrine and practice, and to establish the religion as a distinctive movement separate from Kardecist Spiritism on the one hand and Afro-Brazilian religions on the other. According to Umbanda scholar Diana Brown, the proceedings of the conference indicated the founders’ concern to ‘‘purify’’ Umbanda by purging from it any associations with black Africa,

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claiming instead the religion’s mystical origins in either time immemorial or an ancient civilization (usually Egypt or India). Conference organizers repeatedly compared Umbanda with Macumba (the popular name for AfroBrazilian traditions in the southeast), which they disparaged as black magic. In contrast to Macumba’s practice of animal sacrifice and drumming, and its leaders’ (alleged) exploitation of their simple-minded followers, they claimed that Umbanda was dedicated solely to the cultivation of benevolent spirits and the charitable provision of spiritual healing to those in need.10 The prominence of exu and pomba gira spirits in Macumba seems to have been a focus of special ire among conference goers. Lacking the light necessary for good deeds, these ‘‘spirits of the left’’ were to be exorcised, not revered. One of the main differences between Umbanda and Macumba, according to conference organizers, was the role of these dangerous spirits. Thus began a long process of bureaucratization, rationalization, doctrinal formation, and moralization in which predominately male, middle class Umbanda practitioners worked to systematize Umbanda beliefs and practices through various federations, conferences, and publications, as well as radio and television programs. At the same time, rank and file practitioners on the margins of these efforts embraced the African elements of their religion and welcomed exu and pomba gira spirits into their midst. As one argued ‘‘an Umbanda terreiro which does not use drums or other ritual instruments, which does not sing [ritual hymns] in the African style, which does not offer sacrifices or food to the deities can be anything, but it is not a terreiro of Umbanda.’’11 However, because they lacked the means to disseminate their perspectives more widely, alternative voices like this one remained peripheral within the institutionalization of Umbanda. Thanks largely to the sustained efforts of Umbanda’s codifiers, in the 1960s the religion was officially recognized in the national census and Umbanda festivals began to be included on official calendars. By the 1970s, Umbanda was the fastest growing religion in Brazil with an estimated 20 million followers nationwide. Today the religion has expanded beyond the nation’s borders, and Umbanda centers can be found in Argentina and Uruguay. As is the case for most ‘‘official’’ versions of history, men have dominated the history of Umbanda, at least as it has been preserved in the records of the religion’s more institutionalized forms. In practice, however, women participate in equal or greater numbers than men. As mediums, they embody humble black slaves and proud Indian warriors, hustlers and prostitutes— archetypal folk characters whose stories are largely absent from the dominant narrative of Brazilian history. As leaders of the small and usually ephemeral centers that serve the vast majority of Umbanda’s followers, women attend to the physical and spiritual needs of their communities. For many of these women, Umbanda’s emphasis on healing and the authority of spirit guides

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permits them to exercise a form of power otherwise denied them and the resources to establish an independent identity as spiritual professionals. I explore these aspects of Umbanda more fully in the penultimate section of this chapter.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND RITUAL LIFE Despite the continued efforts of Umbanda federations to codify belief and impose standards of ritual practice, Umbanda centers tend to reflect the personalities and proclivities of their leaders rather than any institutional affiliation. They range from more African-oriented terreiros whose practices overlap significantly with Candomble´, to groups that adhere more closely to Kardecist tenets—and everything in between. Unlike the devotees of Candomble´ who claim fidelity to an ancestral heritage, Umbanda practitioners tend to embrace innovation, resulting in a remarkably fluid pantheon of spirit entities, rituals, and organizational forms. Many Umbanda centers are structured like a business or civil organization with an administrative hierarchy composed of the offices of president, vice president, secretary, and treasurer, and a corpus of ritual functionaries (mediums) who attend the public at specific times. Just as in the highly bureaucratic institutions on which they are patterned, men predominate at the upper levels of the hierarchy while women are more numerous at the lower levels. Such centers typically employ a standardized weekly calendar of ritual sessions or giras with certain days devoted to the spiritual development of mediums (desinvolvimento), and others devoted to charity (cariedade) sessions during which the spirits are summoned in order to consult directly with those who seek their assistance. The former are private sessions in which mediums learn how to ‘‘give way to the spirits’’ so that these can fulfill their mission on Earth by attending those who come to consult them in charity sessions. For the most part, Umbanda centers do not practice extensive rites of initiation such as those found in Candomble´. Charity sessions are open to the public and generally begin with an opening hymn and prayers, followed by the ritual of defumac¸a˜o in which essential herbs are burned in order to purify the ‘‘energetic field’’ of the ritual space and its participants in preparation for the arrival of the spirits. After a ritualized exchange of greetings, the assembled congregation begins to summon the spirits with pontos cantados, or ritual songs, accompanied by drums or handclaps. Soon afterwards the mediums receive their spirit guides, who greet one another, sing, dance, and begin to give consultations (consultas). Umbanda spirits, unlike the orixa´s in Candomble´, interact extensively with their devotees, dispensing advice, performing passes (laying on of hands), and dictating recipes for herbal preparations and propitiatory offerings.

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Some spirits drink alcohol or smoke cigarettes or cigars, which are provided for them by the center’s assistants. After all who wish to consult the spirits have been attended, the congregation begins the cycle of farewell songs that will send the spirits away, followed by songs and prayers which draw the session to a close. Most people who consult Umbanda spirits do so for problems that include domestic and interpersonal issues, troubles finding or keeping a job, chronic illnesses not amenable to medical treatment, repeated misfortune, anxiety, behavioral disturbances, or other psychosomatic disorders. Umbanda, like all Afro-Brazilian religions, offers a pragmatic, problemsolving orientation to suffering. It gives concrete form to events that are experienced as bewildering or out of one’s control, and supplies an array of ritual techniques for addressing them. For example, illness or anxiety may be due to an encosto or perturbing spirit who must be ritually removed. Behavioral disturbances might be diagnosed as the work of unevolved spirits who are demanding ‘‘light.’’ In these cases, the afflicted must develop their skills of mediumship in order to ‘‘work’’ with the spirits. Interpersonal issues may be the result of a demanda or mystical work petitioned by an enemy for this nefarious purpose. Healing in this case requires a defensive strategy, for example, fortifying one’s own ‘‘spiritual protection’’ in order to fend off such mystic attack, and/or an offensive strategy, such as petitioning a counteroffensive mystic attack. Demandas and counter-demandas are the special purview of exu and pomba gira spirits, sometimes referred to as entities ‘‘of the left’’ for exactly this reason. Because they are associated with practices that many condemn as black magic, exu and pomba gira spirits are a contentious topic within Umbanda circles. Outsiders and critics vilify these entities as immoral or evil, and some Umbanda devotees refuse to work with them. But for those who do, exu and pomba gira spirits are seen as powerful, and demanding, allies. Said to be the spirits of ‘‘people of the street’’ (povo da rua): prostitutes, conmen, and others forced by circumstance to live by their wits, exu and pomba gira spirits represent marginalized social types. Unfettered by dominant norms of polite society, they are bawdy and fun-loving, qualities that make them especially beloved among their devotees. Ceremonies in which they are ritually summoned to possess the faithful are events of great revelry for it is said that pomba gira and exu spirits return to the human world to have fun (se divertir): to dance, sing, drink, smoke, and be adored. These ceremonies are also occasions for those seeking assistance to consult them directly, via the body of the entranced. Unlike the orixa´s and other more ‘‘evolved’’ spirits, exus and pomba giras are believed to perform any request as long as they receive material recompense in the form of their favorite vices: alcohol, cigarettes, perfume, or other luxury

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items. As a result, they are thought to be particularly effective in resolving questions of money, power, and romance: those problematic areas of life where deeply held desires may clash with normative moral codes. Devotees sometimes describe these entities as the ‘‘slaves’’ of the orixa´s, charged to do the work that the orixa´s, as representatives of ancestral tradition, will not. In particular, male-female relations fall under the domain of pomba gira spirits, who are said to specialize in love magic. In the next section I examine the case of a female leader of a small community dedicated to a variety of Afro-Brazilian spirits. Nazare´’s path from affliction to healing is typical among participants in Afro-Brazilian religions, as is the intensity of her relationship with her primary spirit guide, the pomba gira Maria Molambo (Raggedy Maria), who she believes has protected her since she was a young child. Nazare´’s story illustrates some of the ways that women’s daily lives and experiences intersect with religion in urban Brazil. It also suggests that the repertoire of narrative and symbolic forms provided by Afro-Brazilian religions enables participants to manage problematic relationships, express acute but inchoate frustrations, understand otherwise inexplicable events, and to act in the world in ways that would otherwise be difficult or impossible.

WOMEN, SPIRIT POSSESSION, AND HEALING I first met Nazare´ in 2000 while conducting ethnographic fieldwork on Afro-Brazilian religions, and the data on which this section is based was derived from an extensive series of life history interviews and participantobservation. A middle-aged housewife and mother, Nazare´ lives with her extended family in a lower-class neighborhood on Rio de Janeiro’s northern periphery. The term that she uses most often to describe her relationship with the spirit world is zelador. Zelador means caretaker or guardian, and the word is often used to refer to the male or female caretaker of a commercial building or residence. Like the practitioners of other African-derived religions like Vodou or Santeria, Nazare´ is not concerned with affirming the reality of the spirits through abstract statements of belief, but with correctly fulfilling the caretaking duties that will ensure the spirits’ beneficence in her life and the lives of those under her spiritual care. Nazare´ presides over what is sometimes called a crossed house (casa trac¸ada); that is, a community that combines ritual practices and entities typically associated with Candomble´ with those typically associated with Umbanda. Such crossed houses are not unusual and are an important reminder that the realities of religious practice continually confound our efforts to categorize them. In addition to the activities involved in caring for her own tutelary spirits and the spirits of those under her spiritual care, Nazare´ conducts periodic ritual gatherings in which she and her followers

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summon the orixa´s and other spirit entities with drum and song. She also offers an array of trabalhos (ritual works) including divination readings, herbal treatments, purifications, and spiritual fortifications to clients who seek her spiritual assistance. While she claims to receive a number of spirit entities, it is the pomba gira Maria Molambo whom Nazare´ recognizes as her chief spiritual protector and credits with her success in attracting the small (and ever-shifting) stable of clients who provide the economic and social support that sustains her religious community. Her relationship with this spirit was not always so beneficial. Like most Afro-Brazilian religious leaders, Nazare´ attained her present-day position only by overcoming a series of afflictions that she believes were provoked by the troublesome Maria Molambo. In its general outlines, Nazare´’s story is typical of women who work with the spirits. It is deeply intertwined with the unsatisfactory relationships that she has had with the men in her life, most particularly her husband Nilmar, with whom she has lived on and off for the past 35 years. Nazare´ claims that the spirits first called her to their service when she was a very young child, provoking episodic behavioral disturbances in which she said and did things of which she had no memory. Family members later reported that these episodes were characterized by aggressive behavior and verbal outbursts of which Nazare´ denied any knowledge. They seem to have occurred initially in the context of Nazare´’s fraught relationship with her father, an autocratic, abusive figure who frequently beat his wife and daughter. After a precipitous marriage at the age of 15, Nazare´’s behavioral disturbances began to be directed at her husband. Like most women of her generation and social class, Nazare´ aspired to become a housewife and mother. Married life, however, turned out to be a source of considerable anguish for her. From the beginning, her relationship with Nilmar was troubled by a climate of mutual distrust and conflict. The births of their first three children were interspersed with a series of separations and reconciliations. Convinced that Nilmar was seeing other women, Nazare´ feared that he would abandon her and the children. His philandering was a constant source of humiliation for her, further exacerbating her domestic distress. Nilmar reported that Nazare´ began to behave strangely after the birth of their third child. On more than one occasion he awoke in the middle of the night to find Nazare´ in the street clad only in her nightclothes, with no knowledge of how she had gotten there. He described rages in which she would destroy household items or threaten him, and then later deny that she had done so. For her part, Nazare´ maintained that she was unaware of her actions during these episodes. As she put it: ‘‘I would do these absurd things without realizing it and without having any memory of it. I wasn’t conscious of it, but I also didn’t want to believe it.’’

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On the advice of a colleague, Nilmar eventually brought Nazare´ to an Umbanda center, where her behavioral problems were diagnosed as the work of a well-known pomba gira named Maria Molambo (Raggedy Maria), said to be the disembodied spirit of a young woman who ran away from an arranged marriage, was disinherited by her wealthy father, and forced to prostitute herself on the streets to survive. Nazare´, despite initial resistance, underwent a series of rituals and began to frequent Umbanda, gradually learning how to control what she and Nilmar had come to understand as episodes of spirit possession. As she gained ritual mastery over the spirit, the behavioral disturbances that had plagued the couple’s home life became less frequent. Within the framework of Umbanda, by ritually recognizing Maria Molambo and providing the appropriate offerings, Nazare´ redirected the spirit’s energy towards beneficial rather than disruptive ends. In time, Nazare´ began to cultivate relationships with other spirit entities, and later was initiated into Candomble´. As Nazare´ deepened her relationship with the Afro-Brazilian spirit world, she began to organize regular drum and dance ceremonies in the basement of her residence and to attend neighbors and friends seeking spiritual assistance. This effectively marked the establishment of Nazare´’s own religious community and her position as zelador. Characteristically, Nazare´ attributed this endeavor not to her own agency but to that of Maria Molambo, whose reputation as a powerful entity had spread throughout the neighborhood. Today Nazare´ administers a small cadre of initiates attached to her terreiro and offers ritual-therapeutic services to clients. In addition to holding bimonthly drum and dance ceremonies, she organizes periodic feasts for the spirits that attract anywhere from 20 to 100 people. In serving the spirits, Nazare´ has dramatically expanded her social network and her place in the world. The small income that she derives from this work has made her less dependent on her husband’s financial support and less fearful of the future. As a zelador, Nazare´ enjoys a degree of independence rare among the women of her neighborhood, whose lives revolve around home and children. Thanks to Maria Molambo, Nazare´ has been able to establish an identity independent from her role as Nilmar’s wife, a relationship that was a constant source of insecurity, frustration, and humiliation for her. Although she still resides with Nilmar, Nazare´ described their current living arrangement as one of ‘‘brother and sister,’’ rather than husband and wife, a transformation that she attributes to her work as a zelador. Her use of the expression ‘‘brother and sister’’ signals a lack of sexual activity in her relationship with Nilmar, a subtle reference to the celibacy the spirits demand before any ritual activity. But it also suggests that a more profound shift has occurred in her marriage, one in which the traditional hierarchy of

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husband and wife has been supplanted by a more egalitarian, sibling-like relationship. In her study of Afro-Brazilian religions, the anthropologist Stefania Capone observed that pomba gira spirits are most often invoked in the context of a woman’s intimate relationships with men, whether father, husband, or lover.12 She theorized that the affiliation with a pomba gira enables a woman to claim, through the guise of the spirit, a measure of autonomy or respect from the men in her life, or to impose her will on them. As is the case with other examples of female-dominated spirit possession traditions like the Zar of eastern Africa, working with the spirits can be seen as a creative response to restrictive gender roles or inadequate love relationships, as well as an economic strategy for women who have few options beyond the traditional wifely role. But it can also be understood as a way to externalize profound or unconscious frustrations for which there is no other acceptable outlet. In Nazare´’s case, it was only after she had entered Umbanda that she began to develop a framework for dealing with the events in her life that seemed out of her control, most immediately, the strange behavior that seems to have been provoked by her volatile relationship with Nilmar. This framework slowly developed through the process of ‘‘socializing’’ these behavioral episodes, giving them a name and a purpose within the broader religious schema that Afro-Brazilian religions provide. It was this framework, and more particularly the mythology of pomba gira, that enabled Nazare´ to make sense of some of the frustrations of her married life. Not only that, but she discovered that the kinds of behavioral idiosyncrasies of which she had been accused were not unusual: that, in fact, they were indications of a spiritual calling that enabled her to claim a power beyond that of wife and mother.

CONCLUSION Like Nazare´, most participants join an Afro-Brazilian religious community as a result of illness or affliction. By establishing and maintaining contact with the spirit world and appeasing the spirit determined to be the author of the ailment in question, these religions provide an etiology and a therapeutic regimen for suffering, reestablishing order to a world that is experienced as out of order. Because of their emphasis on healing a wide variety of afflictions, some researchers have argued that Afro-Brazilian religions attract more women than men. In her cross-cultural study of women and religion, anthropologist Susan Sered observed that women suffer disproportionately from persistent and recurring conditions such as headaches, dizziness, and fatigue—the most common ailments treated by Afro-Brazilian healers.13 Moreover, illness is one of the few socially acceptable ways that women can express their

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frustrations, or claim attention and sympathy. In Afro-Brazilian religions, ill women find a supportive community in which their suffering is understood as religiously significant. Others argue that the centrality of spirit possession in Afro-Brazilian religions accounts for the predominance of women. As a means of direct contact with the sacred, spirit possession enables poor and working-class women greater access to status, power, autonomy, and authority than elsewhere in Brazil. Still others point out that serving the spirits entails activities usually performed by women: preparing and serving food offerings, organizing communal celebrations, caring for altars, assisting others in need. In contrast to the outside world, within Afro-Brazilian traditions women’s work as mothers and caretakers is valued as a form of sacred service, and behavioral traits that society cultivates particularly in women, like obedience and submission, offer a route to increased authority. By recognizing in women’s domestic lives the skills necessary to mediate the interface between human and spirit worlds, Afro-Brazilian religions permit ordinary women to experience themselves as powerful and sacred. As Sered noted, while a person’s gender does not determine religiosity, it does influence the kinds of religions, rituals, communities, and experiences that one is drawn to or which one finds meaningful.14 Within Candomble´ and Umbanda, traditionally female concerns like illness, relationships, and food preparation are central, and female traits of nurturing and compassion are seen as important qualities for religious leadership. Through the experience of spirit possession, women enjoy direct access to power and authority and the prestige that accompanies it. In a social environment in which women are expected to become wives and mothers, Afro-Brazilian religions allow women to integrate their domestic and religious responsibilities, expand their social networks, establish alternative identities, and exercise a degree of freedom that may otherwise be unavailable to them.

NOTES 1. Susan Starr Sered, Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994). 2. The transatlantic traffic formally ended in 1850, although slaves were clandestinely shipped to Brazil until slavery was abolished in 1888. Thomas Skidmore, Brazil: Five Centuries of Change (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999), 17, 53. 3. Rachel Harding, A Refuge in Thunder: Candomble´ and Alternative Spaces of Blackness (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000). 4. Ruth Landes, The City of Women, 1st New Mexico Press ed. (Albuquerque: New Mexico University Press, 1994).

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5. Maria Salete Joaquim, O papel da lideranc¸a religiosa feminina na construc¸a˜o da identidade negra (Rio de Janeiro, Pallas, 2001), 106. 6. Sheila Walker, ‘‘Everyday and Esoteric Reality in the Afro-Brazilian Candomble´,’’ History of Religions 30, No. 2 (1990): 118. 7. Robert Voeks, Sacred Leaves of Candomble´: African Magic, Medicine and Religion in Brazil (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997). 8. Joseph Murphy, Working the Spirit: Ceremonies of the African Diaspora (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), 73. 9. Diana Brown, Umbanda: Religion and Politics in Urban Brazil (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 10. Brown, Umbanda, 41–46. 11. Brown, Umbanda, 47. 12. Stefania Capone, La queˆ te de l’Afrique dans le Candomble´ : Pouvoir et tradition au Bre´sil (Paris: E´ditions Karthala, 1999), 182. 13. Sered, Priestess. 14. Sered, Priestess.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Brown, Diana. Umbanda: Religion and Politics in Urban Brazil. New York: Columbia University Press, 1994. Capone, Stefania. La queˆte de l’Afrique dans le Candomble´: Pouvoir et tradition au Bre´sil. Paris: E´ditions Karthala, 1999. Harding, Rachel. A Refuge in Thunder: Candomble´ and Alternative Spaces of Blackness. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Joaquim, Maria Salete.O papel da lideranc¸a religiosa feminina na construc¸a˜o da identidade negra. Rio de Janeiro, Pallas, 2001. Landes, Ruth. The City of Women, 1st New Mexico Press ed. Albuquerque: New Mexico University Press, 1994. Murphy, Joseph. Working the Spirit: Ceremonies of the African Diaspora. Boston: Beacon Press, 1994. Sered, Susan Starr. Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Skidmore, Thomas. Brazil: Five Centuries of Change. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999. Voeks, Robert. Sacred Leaves of Candomble´ : African Magic, Medicine and Religion in Brazil. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1997. Walker, Sheila. ‘‘Everyday and Esoteric Reality in the Afro-Brazilian Candomble´.’’ History of Religions 30, No. 2 (1990): 103–28.

CHAPTER

6

Sacred Dance-Drumming: Reciprocation and Contention within African Belief Systems in the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Area Halifu Osumare

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frican peoples have always worshipped through the medium of the body. Expressive dance movements have been a central part of the worship system of the Yoruba of Nigeria, the Bakongo of Central Africa, the Santeria religion in Cuba, and the Pentecostal Christians in the United States. Historically, from the Old World to the New World, African peoples utilized their propensity to embody spirit and the divine principle, whether their colonizers and slave owners comprehended this cultural trait or not. As the famous dance anthropologist and choreographer Katherine Dunham has said, the use of dance and music to worship became, in a sense, a process of saving themselves in a near impossible situation: abusive slavery and severely restrictive social segregation. My goal in this chapter is to illuminate the reciprocal relationship between African and Caribbean dance classes and the practice of African-based religions in the San Francisco/ Oakland Bay Area, as well as to analyze the conflicts implicit in the belief systems that underwent the forced migration of the Atlantic slave trade.

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Though northern California is often left out of the national discourse on the practice of African belief systems, Oakland and San Francisco are flourishing with activity and attendant controversy in these spiritual practices. The Bay Area has joined a growing number of African religious communities such as New York, New Jersey, Miami, Philadelphia, Chicago, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC in the honoring of African deities through rituals containing dance and music. Despite negative press and Hollywood stereotyping in movies such as Angel Heart and The Believers, more people, of all ethnicities, are being drawn to these religious communities in a life-transforming manner. They are particularly compelled by the infectious quality of sacred drumming and dancing. Due to their proliferation in the urban United States, these belief systems are becoming far less alien and anomalous.1 In the San Francisco/Oakland Bay Area, as in other metropolitan areas of the United States, there exists a vital and reciprocal relationship among African-based religions, Caribbean folkloric dance-music ensembles, and public dance classes where African and Caribbean dances are taught. In fact, many of the religious leaders are the teachers of the classes and artistic directors of the dance ensembles. The performances and classes provide what the late Caribbeanist scholar VeVe Clark, following French historian Pierre Nora, calls, a lieu de me´moire—a site or location of memory—-where the milieux de me´moire—the original cultural context or environment—can be reenacted.2 The dance classes actually form, what I call, a site of promulgation, a particular type of lieu de me´moire where movement form and social function through instruction reconfigure to create an embodied experience of the religious belief systems for the participant. In this way, the ensembles and classes often serve as an introduction to the religious underpinnings and an entree into involvement in the two main streams of African-based religions in the United States: Santeria and Yoruba-oriented Lucumi from Cuba and Puerto Rico, and Vodou from Haiti. The practice in the urban United States of Santeria, in particular, can be viewed within the contentious frame that British sociologist Paul Gilroy (1993) calls modernity and black Atlantic double-consciousness. Within the ongoing controversy about an ‘‘authentic’’ African presence in the Americas, beginning with the infamous 1940s Herskovits-Frazier debates,3 Santeria serves as an arena of contention contributed to often by its own practitioners. The contested terrain centers on Santeria’s lineage in the Yoruba religion, as practiced for centuries in the West African region of Nigeria. This chapter seeks to juxtapose two dynamics of U.S. Africanbased religious practices as ‘‘axes of reciprocation and contention,’’ which can offer insight into the larger debate about an African presence in the Americas. Both the linkage of the secular dance classes and performing companies with the actual religious practices and the Santeria/Yoruba

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controversy surfaced during my 1991–1992 field study of Santeria and Vodou religious leaders in Oakland and San Francisco, and was even more pronounced in a follow-up study in 1996. Even though this study was conducted 20 years ago, similar relationships and tensions exist today for a new generation of African religious practitioners.

HISTORICAL BACKGROUND OF AFRICAN-BASED RELIGIONS IN THE BLACK ATLANTIC Cuba was one of the main slave ports of the colonial Americas, importing approximately 700,000 to one million Africans. The last arrived as late as 1865, the same year as the end of the Civil War in the United States.4 The Yoruba were the predominant group brought to Cuba toward the end of the slave trade. They transported with them a finely wrought religious system with a populous spiritual world that has three main features: (1) honoring the ancestors as a moral way of life, (2) receiving personal power through a relationship with spiritual deities that are emissaries of the one God, Oludumare, and (3) understanding of the order of life and individual destiny through divination.5 In Cuba, Yoruba worship with its pantheon of orishas (deities), survived primarily within the cabildos, self-help organizations that also served as temples. It was within the cabildos that the Lucumis (literally ‘‘those in friendship’’— the brotherhood of African nations brought together in Cuba), with many Yorubas as the leaders, maintained their various African traditions, including their religion. Originating in what is now Nigeria and parts of Dahomey (today, the Republic of Benin), the Yoruba religion merged with Catholicism and Spanish peasant spiritualism and became known as Santeria (the way of the saints). Haitian Vodou also emerged from a syncretic process with Catholicism during French colonialism on the island of Hispaniola. Yoruba, Fon, Wolof, Manding, Bambara, and Kongo groups merged into a collectivity of Haitian nacions (nations) that were remembered through specific drum rhythms, dances, and songs within Vodou. The end of the Haitian Revolution in 1804 created the first black republic of the Americas, curtailing continuous French influence. Even though Catholic iconography continued to adorn Vodou alters, and even though the preˆ tsavanne (Haitian stand-in for a Catholic priest) continued to invoke the benediction of the Christian God, Haitian Vodou must be viewed within the historic ‘‘epistemological break with the narrative of European history and memory . . . . ’’6 Thus, both Vodou and Santeria emerged as unique syntheses of Yoruba and Fon deities with Catholic saints and liturgy, as ways of maintaining African religions under the forceful, yet flexible weight of Catholicism. It is within a ‘‘crucible of culture contact,’’ that the present cultural conflict in the African religious practices within the United States is lodged.

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Historian George Brandon positions the contentious history of syncretism, or the blending of two or more elements from completely different cultures, in a useful historical perspective. He explains that, ‘‘In the modern world what has been called syncretism revolves around the more general problem of the organization of cultural diversity in multicultural, multiethnic, and multiracial societies.’’7 Indeed, cultural contact has been a fact throughout pre- and post-Atlantic slave trade, but the inevitable result of cultural contact, that is, cross-cultural fertilization, does not implicitly connote inferiority of Diasporan religions, or dilution of African religions. The question of identity is lodged in a larger debate over black Atlantic cultures as a continuation of African-centered identity versus a bifocal creolization based on the demands of slavery and continued power relations within the African Diaspora. Brandon has created a useful ‘‘five-phase’’ historical developmental typology of Santeria. His schema takes the Yoruba religion from its development in the original Yoruba states of Nigeria, through two stages of Europeanization in Cuba with Catholicism, and then to the United States around 1959. There the Yoruba religion met with both Puerto Rican ‘‘Espiritismo,’’ as well as with what Brandon calls the ‘‘Orisha-Voodooists.’’ The latter are New York’s black nationalists who eventually formed their own branch of Yoruba practices. Brandon’s fifth phase, Orisha-Voodoo, is actually the ultimate severing between what the Orisha-Voodooists perceived as original Yoruba practices and those of Santeria.8 This New World branch of the Yoruba religion, Orisha-Voodoo, was created by African American orisha worshippers in New York who eventually founded Oyotunji African Village in South Carolina, a quasi-self-sustaining religious commune that is still operating today in Beaufort County. Brandon’s five phases, encompassing centuries of history, illuminate the natural socio-political inconstancies of African cultural migration and its cross-cultural influences. My study in the Bay Area relies primarily on Santeria’s U.S. history, although some Vodou respondents are included as well. The adaptation of Brandon’s five-phase framework is complex for the Bay Area; however, this region of the United States moves between the first and second branches of his Phase IV, between continuing waves of new Caribbean immigrants’ practice of traditional Santeria and the fusion practices of post-nationalist African American practitioners. The obvious tensions that are constituent of this contentious history were evident in my Bay Area study.

THE STUDY: DANCE COMPANIES AND CLASSES, AND PRIESTS IN THE BAY AREA From November 1991 through April 1992, I conducted a field study for the Traditional Arts Survey Project of the Cultural Arts Division of the City

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of Oakland. I interviewed four African dance and drum masters, nationals from Senegal, Liberia, and Republic of Congo, and five spiritual/religious leaders within the Oakland/Bay Area orisha and Vodou communities. Although the survey sample is very small, it is representative of both the key leaders of African religious communities and key teachers of Bay Area dance and drumming at that time. The sample size allowed for an in-depth process of multiple interviews and ongoing attendance at ceremonies and performances. A fairly complete picture of the impact of those interviewed on their constituencies was possible. I was viewed as a privileged ‘‘insider’’ by some of my interviewees due to my long-term leadership role in the development of the African-based multicultural arts scene in Oakland, in particular, and the Bay Area, in general. I am the founder, as well as the former executive director of the nowdefunct CitiCentre Dance Theatre. As CitiCentre was one of the sites of this study, I was therefore implicated centrally. My insider status both illuminates and biases my study in various ways. Before beginning this study, I was instrumental in helping to establish the careers of several of the Africans, Cubans, and Brazilians who created the African-based cultural scene at that time in the Bay Area. I studied dance with and attended bembes (festivals for orishas) of some of my interviewees. Utilizing participant-observation, I conducted interviews with audio recording and still photography, as well as videoed performances and ceremonies when permitted. All of those interviewed gave me permission to use their names and personal identities. The dance and drum teachers and company directors that I interviewed include: (1) Blanche Brown, Yoruba priestess and Vodou initiate and artistic director of the now-defunct Haitian dance company Group Petit La Croix, (2) the late Malonga Casquelourd, national of Congo-Brazzaville and founder and former artistic director of the Congolese dance company Fua Dia Congo, (3) Zackariya Diouf, Ph.D. and national of Senegal and director of Diamana Coura West Africa Dance Co., and (4) Naomi Gedo, national of Liberia and choreographer of Diamana Coura West African Dance Co. The two African dance companies, Fua Dia Congo and Diamana Coura West African Dance Co., had then been in existence for nearly 20 years. San Francisco’s Third Wave Dance Studio and Oakland’s CitiCentre Dance Theatre (both now defunct) were the primary sites for weekly scheduled classes and were where performances were rehearsed. The studios were also sites where the dances of the Yoruba orisha and Haitian lwa (deities) were taught. The students in the classes consisted of African Americans, European Americans, Latinos, and, in general, the polyglot of ethnic groups that represent the Bay Area. The other five interviewees—priests or priestesses—are highly creative people who were dedicated to the integrity of knowledge contained within

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their systems of religious belief. All of them reported that they were directed to perform their life’s work in the manner in which they do by their personal deity for whom they were initiated: Maria Concordia was a Puerto Rican Oakland resident, who was ‘‘made’’ a Haitian mambo (priestess) by an elderly Haitian oungan (priest) in the Bronx, New York. At the time of this study, she was in the process of making a Haitian song recording to raise money for her religious house. During my initial visit, Maria had recently made ocha (Santeria initiation) as well, and had an impressive orisha shrine in her living room. When we began to discuss her Haitian practices, she took me into her basement, where she had an elaborate shrine room dedicated to the Vodou lwa. The physical separation between the two belief systems represented her respect for each as related, yet discrete, religious practices. Blanche Brown is an African American who at that time resided in San Francisco. She directed Group Petit La Croix, the only professional Haitian dance company of the Bay Area at the time, and occasionally officiated over Yoruba ceremonies as a priestess in that tradition as well. As was Concordia, Brown was an example of priests/priestesses who practiced both belief systems of Vodou and Santeria; however, she informed me that her entree into Vodou was directed by orishas from within the Santeria/Lucumi tradition. She reported that the orishas of the Cuban system told her to consult the lwa of Vodou for the complete realization of her life path. This is a perfect example of how in the spiritual realm, little conflict exists between traditions that actually cross-reference each other. The parallels between the religions, particularly given the proximity of the Yoruba (primary source of Santeria) and Fon (one of the main groups enslaved in Haiti) in West Africa, are self-evident. As a college-educated African American, Brown was able to comprehend and embody this ‘‘divine parallelism’’ that spirit directed her to follow. Fagbemi Ogundele is an African American male in Oakland who studied with one of the first Nigerian teachers in the United States as well as the late famous Africanist anthropologist, William Bascom. Fagbemi is one of the most respected ifa priests of the Bay Area, having been initiated into the highest level of ifa in Nigeria in 1979. At the time of my study, Fagbemi was writing a book on ifa divination. He was simultaneously a tour manager for some of the top music artists in the recording industry. When interviewing him in his home office filled with his manuscripts and books on Africa and the Diaspora, his persona was arresting and poised, exuding a quiet self-confidence. Shadidi Harding is an African American male dancer and dance teacher, then in his mid-thirties, who has performed with the Oakland-based folkloric ensembles Fua Dia Congo and Ceedo Senegalese Dance Co. He had gone to Nigeria twice to receive the first level of ifa priesthood and the egungun

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(ancestor) initiation. He has also visited the Congo to study dance and music. He was the caretaker of his family’s home in West Oakland, where I conducted my first interview with him. He had created an outdoor shrine in his backyard for the egun spirit for which he had been initiated. Cuban-born Bobi Cespedes is a singer/musician of Cuban sacred and secular music, performing at that time with her family in the noted Bay Area Cuban ensemble Conjunto Cespedes. Although she was actually initiated in orisha worship as a young teen in New York City by her sister, she grew up with Santeria as a part of her family in Cuba until age 14. She took the time to come to my home for the interview in order to be included in my study. She is well integrated within the African American community, having married an African American cultural activist in Oakland. She reported that she indeed had an interest, but no actual contact with the Nigerian Yoruba religion at that time. Luisah Teish, a New Orleans-born African American, is perhaps the most well known Yoruba/Lucumi iyalorisa (Yoruba priestess) of the Bay Area. She has a best-selling book, Jambalaya: The Natural Woman’s Book of Personal Charms and Practical Rituals (1985), as well as several subsequent texts, such as Carnival of the Spirit: Seasonal Celebrations and Rites of Passage (1994). During my fieldwork, she was touring internationally, giving readings of her book, and performing as a storyteller in the African and African American traditions. She simultaneously maintained her religious house, Ile Orunmila Osun, which she then shared with her ex-husband David Wilson (Baba Awo Falokun), a European American and a babalawo of ifa. Although Teish is atypical in terms of her degree of social influence and name recognition as an artist/priestess, many of the spiritual leaders are active in several spheres of endeavor that are of national import, as well as uplifting to the local Bay Area community. Her home, which serves as the site for ile (Yoruba word for house; in this case, worship center) activities, was bedecked in an eclectic array of African, Hawaiian, and East Indian artifacts that spoke of her trademark correlative approach to spiritual knowledge.

AXIS OF RECIPROCATION Reciprocation between the study participants’ creative lives and the practice of their belief systems became very apparent early on in the study. A reciprocation also emerged between the dance classes and performing ensembles in the Bay Area with the rituals of the religions as a definite line between lieux de me´moire, or site of memory, and milieux de me´moire, or site of cultural context. Several interviewees reported that earlier in their lives as new recruits into the religion they had been introduced to African belief systems through exposure to African-derived dance and music. Luisah Teish,

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for example, recalled her initial interest through the Haitian-derived dance system of the legendary Katherine Dunham, while Shadidi Harding became interested in the underlying African spiritual tenets through studying Congolese dance with Malonga Casquelourd. The African nationals Zak Diouf and Naomi Ghedo discussed the religious context of their dance-drumming and the settings in which they now exist in their Bay Area dance classes. They also reported that the secular context of the public dance class inherently changed the purpose of a dance and its religious efficacy, thereby establishing another type of relationship between the dances and their belief systems. Other interviewees reported that after they had entered their iles as young initiates, they soon realized the degree to which worshippers must sing, dance, and develop a sense of rhythm in order to best worship the African deities. The African ritual experience itself, then, provides incentive to adherents to become students in dance and music classes, establishing a two-way corridor of reciprocal influence. In the 1990s, these classes multiplied with new waves of young dance/drum masters from West Africa, the Caribbean, and Brazil who moved to Oakland and San Francisco. A symbiotic relationship developed that was two-fold: (1) from mastery of dance styles to practice of religion that underpins the dance and music, and (2) from religious worship to technical mastery of the dance and music as constituent components essential to African ritual. Thus, my data showed a reciprocal relationship between the performing arts and African-based belief systems. The symbiotic relationship between the dance class and sacred ceremonies is possible because African performance and dance embodies philosophical thought. The experimental process of creative improvisation implicit in African-based dance and music is akin to the historical process of cultural change itself, a concept that I have discussed elsewhere.9 African peoples literally had to improvise their lives in the New World, blending different African ethnic practices, learning different medicinal herbs indigenous to their new location, and adapting to European and Native American world views. It has always been my contention that the flexibility implicit within the improvisational mode of African performance facilitated the creative social and cultural mergers that were a necessity during and subsequent to slavery. Yet, the realities of conceptualization, representation, and presentation of African religious practices in the New World also created fractious tensions developing from a brutal and contentious history. Several concepts and relationships I have been exploring can be seen in the axis of reciprocation. The dance classes in the secular studios become a site of memory (lieux de me´moire) where dances and rhythms of the religious context can be reenacted, thereby making the experience a mediated process

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of creative experimentation by the instructors and students alike. The actual religious ritual, facilitated by the same dances and rhythms, is the site of cultural context (milieux de me´moire) where particular deities are invoked and made manifest with the dances and rhythms now in the sacred ritual context. Although ‘‘authenticity’’ is a relative term, the ceremonies are where the ageold spiritual rituals are reenacted and made spiritually useful to the whole worshipping community. I therefore give the religious ceremonies the term ‘‘site of authenticity,’’ in contrast to the secular dance classes.

AXIS OF CONTENTION There are varying degrees of conflict within the practice of the orisha belief system in the United States that reflect one result of trans-Atlantic slave history. If Santeria, for example, was essentially a synthesis of Yoruba and Catholicism as a way of maintaining African beliefs in a hostile New World through necessary subterfuge, then black nationalist-oriented perspectives since the 1970s posit that process as an unnecessary compromise at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Moreover, the search for ‘‘authentic’’ practices of African religion in Nigeria and other African countries by those in the United States who were, for the most part, not socialized under such practices, renders the Caribbean religious practices ‘‘colonial’’ in origin and ‘‘tainted’’ by European values deemed no longer appropriate. However, scholars have also analyzed that ‘‘syncretism’’ necessitated by the outlawing of African religious practices, is not the accurate perception of the creative synthesis in which our African ancestors engaged. Both African religion and Catholicism became their realities, and they did not see conflict, for example, between the Virgin Mary and Yemoja (the mother deity of the Yoruba pantheon). Some scholars view the concept of a divine parallel of religious beliefs as a more accurate view of Santeria and Vodou. I administered an updated questionnaire to my study group in August 1996, which revealed an enlargement of many contentions that had surfaced during the original study of 1991–92. Four years later, mambo and iyalorisha Maria Concordia reflected upon contemporary regional religious tensions by stating honestly that, ‘‘the Bay Area is the same as the rest of the country: same conflicts and same arguments. My experience on-line has showed me that this division is rampant and destructive to all of us. In my orisa house, I am trying to bring together these differing communities so that the next generation of priests will start toward a healing process.’’10 The Cuban system versus the Nigerian system is part of the conflict to which she is alluding. In the Bay Area, most initiates in the orisha belief system have come through Cuban or Puerto Rican santeros (priests of the saints). However, many of the African American respondents, like those in Brandon’s New York study,

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went directly to Nigeria in order to become initiated into the mysteries of the Yoruba belief system. Priests in the latter group said that many practices are emphasized differently in Nigeria. For instance, in many of their perceptions the role of the system of ifa divination and Orunmila, the deity of the oracle with its literature of odu (poetic passages direct from the orisha to the living who seek advice), is much more important in Nigeria than among the Cuban or Puerto Rican santeros. This perspective views U.S. Santeria as deemphasizing Orunmila as a major orisha in relation to the other Yoruba saints. Iyalorisha Luisah Teish also commented upon gender differences between the two systems of orisha worship. For example, many practices that she had been told were limited to men within Santeria in the Americas, are, in fact, enjoyed by Nigerian women, such as becoming a female ifa, diviner, or iyanifa. Teish has, since this study was conducted, gone to Nigeria and received initiation as iyanifa, as has one of her female omo (initiated ‘‘children’’ to the elder parent). Another indication of controversy was revealed in the choice of language. Emphasis on what name is given to the religion reinforced a trend in the United States. Interviewees often preferred for me to use the word Lucumi, or better yet, Yoruba or orisha rather than Santeria. This reaction of many African Americans to Spanish terminology in particular is reflective of the historical enslavement experience. While Africans within Cuba retained a strong Yoruba/Lucumi tradition, they also acquired the seemingly inevitable racism and classism that accompanied the creolization process of European and African cultures. The return to the ‘‘originators’’ of Yoruba cosmology and terminology by African Americans represents a political act in the long chain of events that was set up originally by the slave trade. The religio-political act of renaming also represents the attempt to maintain African traditions within the assimilationist tendencies of the New World. John Amira, a musician in both Santeria and Vodou, has illuminated the highly contentious perceptions of the original African religions and their new world counterparts, along with their attendant social contexts: New York religious philosophy has numerous schisms, which are at least partly due to the diversity in the practitioners’ ethnicity, social and economic backgrounds. There is a strong Latin community (Cuban and Puerto Rican) which generally maintains the religion as it is found in the Caribbean. However, there are also many African-Americans involved in the religion who are sometimes looking past Cuba and identifying with African ideals and an increasing number of Anglo-Americans who have been attracted to santerı´a for a variety of other reasons.11

Ethnicity and place of initial contact with the African-based belief system are key. Of the six priests/priestesses that I interviewed, the one Cuban, Bobi

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Cespedes, is the only one who had no problem with using the Cuban terminology. Although she was actually initiated in New York City, she was socialized during her early formative years with Santeria as a part of her family values in Cuba. She had no actual contact with contemporary Nigerian Yoruba religion at the time of the study. Conversely, all of the African Americans had some contact with Nigeria and were moving in the direction of practicing aspects of the Nigerian, rather than the Cuban, system. African Americans and many European Americans are now creating a new synthesis of New World practices that unite Santeria, into which they had originally been initiated, with contemporary Yoruba practices as Nigerian priests have instructed them. This new synthesis is reinforced by reoccurring journeys to initiated priests in specific villages in Nigeria, providing validating contact with Yoruba spiritual leaders. This new synthesis among more educated and well-traveled African American practitioners takes several forms. During a bembe, traditional Cuban dances and songs might be engaged, coupled with a reordering of the sequence in which orisha are invoked, in order to coincide with the Yoruba protocol. At other times specifically learned songs from Yorubaland will be incorporated within the ceremony and sung to drums brought from Nigeria. However, most U.S. iles continue to utilize the dances of the Santeria/Lucumi tradition. I must also acknowledge, however, that within this tension between Yoruba and New World practices, a spiritual respect remained for the history of the religion in the Americas. In my study, the trend of incorporating Yoruban elements into the ceremony was tempered in all cases by an appreciation of the historical fact of Santeria as a conscious link to African beliefs. Current-day practitioners in the United States kept faith with obviously courageous and conceptually advanced Afro-Cuban ancestors. Luisah Teish reflected a general sentiment of many of the priests: that Nigeria was the ‘‘originator,’’ while Cuba was the ‘‘maintainer.’’ African Americans viewed the current stage of orisha worship as one of ‘‘transformation,’’ involving synthesis and conscious historical reflection. They viewed themselves as trying to reconcile the originator-maintainer dichotomy.

THE AXIS OF CONTENTION AND ‘‘RACE’’ THEORY The axis of contention that emerged from the interviews of priests and creative artists reflects the identity representation debate between Afrocentric theorists and what I call Diaspora pluralists—between nationalists who posit Africa as center with little difference between Africans and African descendants in the Americas, and Diaspora pluralists who emphasize discrete differences between African and Diaspora cultural production. For those in the latter category, if the Caribbean was a ‘‘site of maintenance’’

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in the continuation of Yoruba worship, then cultural change was inevitable based on the social needs of each Caribbean island’s particular socio-cultural and political history. The Afro-centric purists argue that the Caribbean is, in fact, a site of cultural memory, diluted in potency and efficacy by often ‘‘brain-washed’’ Spanish/Cuban santeros. The so-called inadequacy of Santeria, due to perceived ‘‘contamination’’ from religious syncretism, is usually the reason for original initiation or reinitiation in Nigeria by several of my African American respondents. The political problem of ‘‘authenticity’’ within orisha worship in the Diaspora was generated by the introduction of Santeria in the United States during the post-World War II era. This era included the seminal and influential social upheaval of the Civil Rights and Black Power movements. Gilroy brought attention to this issue of identity representation in what he perceived as U.S. African Americans’ focus on ‘‘external meanings around blackness . . . in the elaboration of a connective culture’’ from Africa to the Americas. 12 The 1960s and 1970s Black Nationalist movement in the United States was a national rallying cry for reidentification with Africa, echoing previous black political agendas, such as W. E. B. DuBois’s series of Pan-Africanist conferences starting in 1919 and Marcus Garvey’s 1910s nationalist-oriented United Negro Improvement Association, with its emphasis in economics throughout the black world. Gilroy points to a conceptualized ‘‘politicization of blackness’’ that is not ‘‘ethnically marked,’’ such as specific African religions were during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. During the process of creolization, Afro-Caribbean cultures were not politicized around race. Brandon is helpful in understanding these different historical processes in the establishment of Santeria in the urban United States. In relation to the United States, Yoruba religion and santerı´a . . . involve not the retention of African tradition but rather the convergence of the reintroduction of African traditions by immigrants from areas where African religions have been retained with greater influence and greater fidelity, with the purposeful revitalization of that tradition by U.S. blacks and Puerto Ricans.13

Brandon further illuminates U.S. and West Indian differences vis-a`-vis the socio-political motivation for African religious practices: for the early Cuban Santeros exiled in the United States, the initial situation was not only that they were isolated from cultural interaction with the alien mainland society, but that initially, they did not have a religious sanctuary to fall back upon either. This they had to create. The Orisha-Voodooists were impelled toward African religion, not because they were or felt isolated from the dominant culture in almost all of its forms but rather because they sensed that they were drowning in it and wanted out.14

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The socio-cultural differences between black Americans who have a long and oppressive history in the United States and Afro-Caribbean immigrants have often created contentious environments that have caused the splintering of iles and the formation of politically based religious organizations, particularly in New York. The example of the South Carolina African American village of Oyotunji, which developed from its founders’ original New York Santeria roots and eventually became steeped in Nigerian-based Yoruba worship, is the most notable one. The Bay Area, although not outside of this national controversy, provides a more tolerant socio-political example. It has fewer iles based on race, and some that even embrace both Nigerian and Cuban practices. It must be emphasized, however, that those iles engaging in a conscious synthesis are headed by African American priests and priestesses (as opposed to Cuban or Puerto Rican ones). These black Americans have made pilgrimages to Nigeria, and therefore actually embody both branches of the orisha tradition. Gilroy emphasizes the importance of ‘‘rituals of performance’’ as primary sites of ‘‘linkage between black cultures,’’ that may allow a way out of a rigid interpretation of blackness and ‘‘authenticity’’ debates among practitioners of African belief systems in the United States. I argue that flexibility is what is needed in contemporary times, which will allow for these cultural ‘‘linkages.’’ Spiritual practice, in particular, should be the place where this is possible. After all, the understanding of divine parallelism that allowed for the syncretism of African and Spanish spirituality in Santeria, which in turn fostered cultural tolerance, was a cross-cultural linkage resulting from the cognition of one unifying Creator.

DANCE AND AFRICAN SPIRITUALITY IN THE AXIS OF RECIPROCATION I argue that it is precisely my construct of the axis of reciprocation—the continuum of the lieux de me´moire of the dance classes and staged performances with the milieux de me´moire of sacred ritual—that offers an important process for how African-based religions can move positively forward in the twenty-first century. Practitioners must pay more attention to the dynamics of dance and music as a part of African-based spiritual practices because they provide a model of adaptability that parallels the operations of change in the overall belief system over time. Clark alluded to this idea of change in cultural representation with her concept of the ‘‘memory of difference,’’ when she analyzed Katherine Dunham’s research-to-performance methodology. I apply Clark’s idea of how cultural memory is recorded differently through performance, as well as her paradigm of lieux and milieux de me´moire, to inevitable modifications of African ritual over eras of time in different social circumstances.

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The memory of difference in dance provides a paradigm for examining the dialogues between research and performance; between research and the training of dancers; and between the established order of repertoire and the ways it changes over time as well as the portrayals of class and gender differences that have not always been acknowledged as significant elements . . . .’’15

African-based performance is not static; dance and music are always open to negotiation by knowledgeable practitioners who register differences in representation of cultural memory. Examples of Clark’s ‘‘memory of difference’’ abound, laying bare the realities of how culture lives and breathes. A drummer introduces a new variation on an old rhythm; a dancer invokes a new movement to show Oshun’s (Yoruban deity of the rivers) coquettishness that everyone begins to imitate; a choreographer organizes a performance of the Vodou dances in a unique way that brings new insight to the meaning of the lwa; or a master drummer allows a particular woman into the sacred drum circle that previously was restricted to men. Change by knowledgeable practitioners is inevitable and desirable in order for the belief systems to remain vital and relevant. Often these changes become apparent within the more flexible site of the secular dance classes and performance stages, because African-based performance (dance, music, orality) is a reflector of inevitable ambiguities through the creativity of improvisation, as well as serendipitous minute-by-minute human contingencies. These are expected in the lieux de me´moire, but can eventually find their way into the milieux de me´moire of the religious ritual as well. By studying this reciprocal relationship, we can further understand how African belief systems have been modified, yet have remained efficacious, over time and space. During my interviews, the African nationals from Congo, Senegal, and Liberia, all of whom have knowledge of and experience in the traditional religions of their respective cultures, had no conflict with the relationship between their secular dance classes and stage performances and their sacred indigenous religious practices. For example, Zak Diouf and Naomi Gedo viewed the theatrical stage as an opportunity for artistic experimentation with dances and rhythms that are used in sacred masquerading ceremonies of West Africa. However, they did not perceive the staging of ancestral mask dances as the actual sacred dances themselves. Context and intent provides the crucial difference, even when the same rhythm and movements are executed. In analyzing the dance in African performance, researchers have found that expressive movement in African belief systems provides an understanding of the body as an encoder of memory in a far different way than the mind acts as an encoder. History that is danced, as Robert Farris Thompson (1974) has told us, creates a kind of muscle memory, in conjunction with cognitive, personal, and collective group memory, allowing the narratives of

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a people to be transmitted through expressive reenactments. Erzulie Freda, the Haitian deity of love and sensuality, is marked by vigorous and flirtatious shoulder rolls in the zepaule dance. Yemaya in Cuba, the mother deity of the ocean, representing nurturance and wisdom, is danced in flowing, undulating torso and arm movements, with a flowing blue and white skirt that represents the waves of the ocean. The drum rhythms and specific dances, along with color-coding of orisha costuming, allow for the codes that represent African world views to be transferred to new sites of memory. The often hard and staccato chopping movements of the deity of iron and war, Ogun (Cuban/Yoruba) or Ogou (Haitian Vodou), represent a sense of clearing obstacles—both physical and spiritual—in order to accomplish life’s goals. The whirling overhead movements of the dance of Oya (Yoruba female warrior deity of the winds and transformation) suggest a stirring up and getting rid of that which is not desired, thereby furthering personal growth. Dances become an important tool in knowledge transference. Philosophy, then, is enacted through dancing bodies, with embodied knowledge carrying memory in unique ways. ‘‘For ritual community members,’’ says dance anthropologist Yvonne Daniel, ‘‘the dance/music performances suggest myths and retell cultural stories, but most important, they charter and encourage social behavior in present everyday lives.’’16 Cultural memory lodged in the pataki (Yoruba stories and myth) in the Cuban system, for example, is danced and dramatized. The codes of living contained in the myths, in turn, direct one’s understanding of one’s own life path outside of ritual. Daniel gives poignant insight as to the importance of the body in conveying these life principles. Embodied knowledge in African Diaspora communities has been revered and developed; it can reveal what the body knows, what it is capable of . . . . Through resilient and exciting ritual performance, dance and music embody memory and perseverance and, in the end, inspire and support survival.17

Thus, dance as embodied wisdom invokes cultural memory that allows past and present to commune, rendering time and space irrelevant in sacred ritual. For Brandon also, dance and music become a part of the complex mechanisms for memory, ‘‘the process or technique by which memory preserves the information’’ of history.18 The same danced deities manifest in effective ways for survival, whether they are invoked in Ile-Ife, Nigeria, Mantanzas, Cuba, Port-au-Prince, Haiti, New York City, or Oakland, California.

CONCLUSION Cultural transformation and accommodation to new socio-political demands always create potential challenges and problems, and this was no less

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so for millions of Africans brutally enslaved throughout the Americas. The tensions that exist within the axis of contention between the practices of West African religions and their New World counterparts of Santeria and Vodou represent the inevitable challenges of reconciling these transformations over time (history) and space (different societies). Yet, similar processes of change over time were also in play within the originating context of West Africa. In this sense, all cultural environments, including that in modern-day African cultures, are sites of memory that are open to varying degrees of interpretation. For example, religious ceremonies in Nigeria today utilize the contemporary Yoruba language. On the other hand, orisha invocations in modern Cuba still utilize the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Yoruba language of antiquity, thus preserving the original invocations as they were utilized for the deities centuries ago in the Motherland. Which site is the most ‘‘original’’ becomes a relative concept. This is an example of the ambiguities and complexities of constructs such as ‘‘authenticity’’ versus ‘‘adaptation.’’ In the reciprocation between the sacred and secular worlds, for most African peoples, there is no dichotomy at all. The same drum rhythm may be played in either context, yet offer different meanings and effects depending on the two contexts. The symbiotic relationship between sacred and secular connotes a fluid concept of culture where the perceptual boundaries of ritual space and ordinary space are demarcated, yet are interdependent for their respective social functions. Interpretations that pit cultural absolutism of a ‘‘pure’’ African identity against the reality of a New World cultural hybridity are misguided. A cultural philosophy that emphasizes the fluidity between the sacred and the profane implicitly reconciles the axis of contention. The axis of reciprocation, gleaned from Clark’s research-to-performance model, contains the mechanisms of a deep invocation of memory that allowed African codes to be transmitted over time. Dances and rhythms taught at CitiCentre Dance Theater in Oakland or Third Wave Dance Studio in San Francisco, during the 1990s when I conducted the study, transmitted some of that memory to persons who had no direct experience of those original contexts from which the dances and drum rhythms came. Reconstructed memory in dance studios and on theatrical stage—lieux de me´moire—allows the astute observer a micro view of the macro process of change as any culture’s true enduring state. Except for those who continue to argue for museum-like replication of researched dances, most artistic directors and choreographers, as well as dedicated audiences, allow license in the artistic process that naturally involves translation by artistic personnel. Change and reinterpretation are inevitable and, indeed, are a part of any living culture The participants in my research sample made attempts to both strictly adhere to aspects of ritual in which they had been trained, while making adaptations with elements of sacred ceremony over which they had license.

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During a ceremony I witnessed in Oakland for a ‘‘marriage’’ to Damballa (Haitian serpent deity), Maria Concordia, for example, read directly from her book of prayers given to her by her Haitian oungan, while, at the same time, she wore white pants instead of the traditional ceremony white skirt as is the tradition in Haiti. Blanche Brown used her knowledge of timehonored stage techniques in presenting the sacred dance-drumming of Haiti by creating various choreographic floor patterns and dance groupings that would not necessarily exist in a Vodou ceremony in Port-au-Prince. Yet Haitian rhythms and songs were strictly adhered to in the performance. Similarly, several Bay Area Yoruba iles, presided over by African American priests and priestesses, invoke orishas during ceremonies by combining acknowledged orisha songs of Cuba with Yoruba prayers obtained in Nigerian villages. My fieldwork revealed the rich layering of sacred codes, with changing style necessary in New World sites of memory. This reflected both the flexibility of African ritual and performance, as well as the process of cultural change itself. In the New World, Caribbean and U.S. urban African religious communities continue to make sacred dance-drumming a mechanism of cultural memory using old codes and narratives within the adaptive changing style. Sacred dance-drumming as it is represented in dance classes in Bay Area studios and on performance stages provides inspiration for new recruits to Cuban Santeria and Haitian Vodou. It also implicitly contains answers to the ‘‘culture wars’’ around African identity between purists and pluralists within the African Diaspora. The body is the simplest unit for carrying the sacred rhythms and codes of memory that can be adapted to New World demands. In this way of life, dance and music are the essential ingredients of cultural memory that ‘‘open one’s head’’ for the deities to enter. In Africanbased spiritual practices, this is how a group ‘‘remembers’’ repeatedly and thereby becomes an effective community.

NOTES 1. In 1964 Oba Morote called for a drum festival toSango (orisha of thunder) at Casa Carmen in Harlem, and 3,090 people went [Murphy, 1988:50]. In 1992 for an original version of this chapter, I interviewed Luisah Teish, priestess of Yoruba/Lucumi in Oakland. She said that there was a call for a procession for Obatala (orisha of clarity, light and creativity) in 1978 in the mission district of San Francisco, and 2,000 people paraded in all white (the color for Obatala). There are more African religious adherents throughout the major U.S. urban areas than one would guess, and these are late twentieth-century figures. The numbers have increased as interest in African religion has increased into the twenty-first century.

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2. VeVe A. Clark, ‘‘Performing the Memory of Difference in Afro-Caribbean Dance: Katherine Dunham’s Choreography, 1938–1987’’; ed. Genevieve Fabre and Robert O’Meally, History and Memory in African American Culture (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994), 188. 3. For a summary of this debate between Herskovits the Africanist and Frazier the sociologist who emphasized black assimilation, see Joseph Holloway, ‘‘Introduction,’’ in Africanisms in American Culture, ed. Joseph E. Holloway (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990). 4. George Brandon, ‘‘Sacrificial Practices in Santerı´a: An African-Cuban Religion in the United States.’’ Africanisms in American Culture, ed. Joseph E. Holloway (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990), 120. 5. Joseph M. Murphy, Santerı´a, An African Religion in America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1988), 8. 6. Clark, ‘‘Performing the Memory of Difference,’’ 189. 7. George Brandon, Santerı´a from Africa to the New World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), 7. 8. Ibid., 5–7. 9. See Halifu Osumare, ‘‘ ‘Aesthetic of the Cool’ Revisited: The Ancestral Dance Link in the African Diaspora,’’ UCLA Journal of Dance Ethnology 17 (1993): 1–16. 10. Based on response to Osumare questionnaire from Iyalorisha Maria Concordia on conflict among diverse communities of orisha worshippers, 1996. 11. John Amira, and Steven Cornelius, The Music of Santerı´a, Traditional Rhythms of the Bata´ Drums (Crown Point, IN: White Cliffs Media Co., 1992), 9. 12. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic, Modernity and Double Consciousness (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993), 82. 13. Brandon, Santerı´a from Africa to the New World, 2. 14. Brandon, ‘‘Sacrificial Practices in Santerı´a,’’ 128. 15. Clark, ‘‘Performing the Memory of Difference,’’ 194. 16. Yvonne Daniel, Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomble´ (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005), 1. 17. Ibid., 5. 18. Brandon, ‘‘Sacrificial Practices in Santerı´a,’’ 139.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Amira, John and Steven Cornelius. The Music of Santerı´a, Traditional Rhythms of the Bata´ Drums. Crown Point, IN: White Cliffs Media Co., 1992. Brandon, George. ‘‘Sacrificial Practices in Santerı´a, An African-Cuban Religion in the United States.’’ In Africanisms in American Culture, edited by Joseph E. Holloway. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990.

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. Santeria from Africa to the New World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Brown, Karen McCarthy. Mama Lola, A Vodu Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991. Burton, Richard D. E. Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1997. Clark, VeVe A. ‘‘Performing the Memory of Difference in Afro-Caribbean Dance: Katherine Dunham’s Choreography, 1938–1987.’’ In History and Memory in African American Culture, edited by Genevie`ve Fabre and Robert O’Meally. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Daniel, Yvonne. Dancing Wisdom: Embodied Knowledge in Haitian Vodou, Cuban Yoruba, and Bahian Candomble´. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2005. Dunham, Katherine. Dances of Haiti. Los Angeles: UCLA Center for AfroAmerican Studies, 1983. Gilroy, Paul. The Black Atlantic: Modernity and Double Consciousness. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1993. Holloway, Joseph. Africanisms in American Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Murphy, Joseph M. Santerı´a: An African Religion in America. Boston: Beacon Press, 1988. Osumare, Halifu. ‘‘ ‘An Aesthetic of the Cool’ Revisited: The Ancestral Dance Link in the African Diaspora.’’UCLA Journal of Dance Ethnology 17 (1993): 1–16. Thompson, Robert Farris. African Art in Motion. Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1974. . Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy. New York: Vintage Books, 1984. Turner, Victor. The Anthropology of Performance. New York: PAJ Publications, 1986. Vogel, Susan. ‘‘Introduction: Digesting the West.’’ In Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art, edited by Susan Vogel. New York: Center for African Art, 1991.

P ART IV

Sexuality, Power, and Vulnerability

CHAPTER

7

To Have and to Hold: Possession Performance in Afro-Cuban Regla de Ocha Katherine Johanna Hagedorn

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his chapter will consider women’s experiences of oricha possession in the Afro-Cuban religious tradition of Regla de Ocha (more commonly known as Santeria), using three case studies from my ongoing fieldwork in Cuba and the United States. In Regla de Ocha, oricha possession occurs frequently, particularly in the context of a tambor, an Ocha drumming ceremony held in honor of one or more orichas (deities). Throughout this chapter, I consider issues of sexuality, power, and vulnerability through the lens of oricha possession. For a variety of reasons—some having to do with the divided structure of Ocha religious practice, in which men theologize and women perform religious practice, and some having to do with the interpretation of oricha possession as a penetration of the physical body—women are more likely than men to experience oricha possession. I will shed light on the subjectivity of women’s experiences in Ocha possession by juxtaposing these experiences with the tendency of other Ocha practitioners (usually male) to evaluate these possession experiences using the terms ‘‘fake’’ and ‘‘real.’’ What interests me here is why and how the opinions of Ocha practitioners who are not experiencing oricha possession determine the way in which a practitioner’s possession experience is interpreted and represented. Specifically, why is the power of representing this ecstatic religious experience wrested from those who felt it, and given to those who judge it? In a

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tambor, the people most likely to determine whether an oricha possession is ‘‘real’’ are the musicians: the bata´ drummers (who must be heterosexual men, according to the tenets and practice of Ocha), and lead singer(s) (most often men, but sometimes women). The chapter examines both this apparently overdetermined gender dynamic (male subjects evaluating [possessed] female objects) and the dismissal of the devotee’s ‘‘interiorized’’ experience during the oricha possession in favor of an outside (that is, outside the first-hand experience of possession) assessment of ‘‘realness.’’ I consider the sexualized language used among musicians at a tambor to describe oricha possession, and suggest that oricha possession is interpreted and represented as a kind of penetration, considered to be more appropriate for women (or feminized men) than for heterosexual men. I then connect possession performance and sexual performance, and suggest that women’s subjective experiences of oricha possession are objectified because of the vulnerable and receptive state that allows for an ecstatic consciousness. Divine interiority becomes externalized during a possession performance, and is thus open to outside interpretation, which, in the case of Ocha, sometimes leads to the profanation and silencing of sacred experience.

REGLA DE OCHA AND THE SEXUAL POLITICS OF ORICHA POSSESSION Regla de Ocha is an oricha religion, with its roots in Yorubaland, Nigeria, and the almost four centuries of Cuba’s Atlantic slave trade that brought oricha worship to Cuba.1 The names of some of the Afro-Cuban orichas (divine entities), such as Elegua´, Ogu´n, Oya´, Yemaya´, Chango´, and Ochu´n are directly related to their antecedent deities in southwestern Nigeria, Togo, Benin, and Ghana. Their progeny can be found not only in Cuban Ocha, but also in Haitian Vodou, Brazilian Candomble, Trinidadian Shango, and other religious traditions in the New World. Although Ocha is theologized as a monotheistic religion, with Olofi (also called Olodumare and/or Olorun) as its distant God-on-high, it is practiced as a polytheistic religion, with adherents worshipping from 3 to more than 25 separate deities at altars devoted to these particular orichas.2 Each of these divine entities is associated with natural phenomena—such as wind, trees, oceans, rivers, thunder, lightning— as well as with gendered identities and other behavioral attributes. It is during oricha possession—that is, when an oricha possesses the body of a devotee— that the polytheistic nature of Ocha becomes most pronounced, and it is oricha possession that most emphasizes and embodies the gendered behaviors associated with particular orichas, not only for the devotees who experience possession, but for those who observe it. Ocha drumming ceremonies, or tambores, are one of the most effective and public ways of communicating with the orichas in Afro-Cuban Regla

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de Ocha. Although a tambor is generally held in honor of one or two specific orichas, all the orichas are addressed and praised during the preliminary drumming ceremony called the oru seco (literally, ‘‘dry drumming,’’ because of the absence of vocal accompaniment). During the oru seco, bata´ drummers play rhythms associated with each particular oricha in a set order, beginning and ending with the oricha of the crossroads, Elegua´. After the oru seco is complete, the sung, public part of the tambor occurs, in which singers, drummers, dancers, and other attendees praise various orichas. It is during this public part of the ceremony that oricha possession may take place, and a successful tamborfeatures at least one oricha possession, and preferably several. At a tambor, the people who control the tempo and intensity of the event are the musicians: the lead singer (akpwo´n), who performs the praise songs for particular orichas, and the master drummer (olu´ bata´) and two additional drummers who play the three consecrated bata´ drums, whose rhythmic patterns must correspond to the specific oricha summoned by the akpwo´n. According to the tenets and practice of Ocha, the bata´ drummers must be heterosexual men.3 The lead singers are sometimes men and sometimes women, and no one seems particularly concerned about their sexual orientation.4 The people who most often get possessed are women, and these women often, though not always, get possessed by female-associated orichas. Men may be possessed by female or male orichas, but there is a tendency for men to be possessed by male-associated orichas. These possession associations are influenced most significantly by the head-ruling orichas of the practitioners, so that a child of Oya´, for example, is more likely to be possessed by Oya´ , though theoretically, this same person could be possessed by any oricha. The majority of female practitioners have female-associated headruling orichas, and the majority of male practitioners have male-associated head-ruling orichas, which accounts for the frequency of ‘‘same-sex’’ oricha possession. Ocha practitioners, and especially those who are also bata´ drummers, consistently refer to oricha possession performance in sexualized terms, using verbs such as ‘‘montar’’ and ‘‘coger’’ (both terms connote having sex in vernacular Cuban Spanish) to describe the moment that the devotee’s body becomes inhabited by an oricha. These terms are used regardless of the devotee’s gender, and regardless of the gender projected onto the oricha. The sexualized characterization of oricha possession seems to refer not only to an active force (divine) acting on a receptive force (human), but also to the way in which the empowering musical sound (vocal and rhythmic) penetrates the possession vehicle—through the ears, the skin, the head.5 Gilbert Rouget and Judith Becker are two of the foremost authors who have written about the relationship between music and trance possession. Rouget concludes that although there is no causal relationship between

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music and trance possession, the two are often associatively linked, and that cultural expectations help determine the specific ways in which spiritual entities are humanly embodied. Becker expands Rouget’s work by using neuroscientific evidence about the brain function of trancers to enhance ethnographic findings about possession. Specifically, she notes the frequency with drumming is associated with trancing in scholarly literature, despite the lack of evidence of a causal relationship between the two. 6 More generally, Becker focuses on people who experience deep emotions while listening to music, and outlines an emotion-based theory of trance possession. Becker identifies ‘‘strong arousal’’ as a common response among ‘‘deep listeners,’’ and joins musicologists Susan McClary, John Shepherd, Simon Frith, Portia Maultsby, and others who emphasize the physicality of music reception. A prominent theme within this literature is that rhythmic patterns and harmonic progressions are palpable, and induce or imply movement, and that the movement they imply (strong repetitive motion, moving toward release) can be interpreted as a reference to sexual intercourse. Judith Becker writes, ‘‘Deep listening or trancing may incite sexual passion. Religious ecstasy is often described in explicitly sexual terminology. The similarities between trancing and states of sexual bliss or the invoking of sexual metaphors as a description of trance may be a problem for those whose belief systems place sexuality in the realm of the profane.’’7 Although Becker refers to Asian performance traditions here—primarily Indian, Javanese, and Pakistani—her observations reflect a larger truth, and are specifically applicable to Cuban Ocha religious practice at a tambor. As a compliment, I have heard Havana bata´ drummers (bataleros) yell out to each other ‘‘da´le’’ (‘‘do it,’’ ‘‘give it your all’’), and ‘‘me´tele’’ (‘‘get into it’’), both of which terms are also used to encourage dancers as well as sexual partners.8 Possession performance, which typically starts out as a series of movements representative of the oricha who has come to Earth, draws attention to the physical body, sometimes in quite violent ways. Physical tropes of possession performance in African Diasporal traditions include eyes rolling back in the head, tongue lolling from the mouth, a shaking or quick agitation of the torso, a rigidity in the limbs, and finally a limpness, after the possession experience is over. In Cuban Ocha possession performance, these tropes are extended to include the playful and sometimes mischievous behavior associated with specific orichas (many of whom are overtly sexualized, such as Ochu´n, Elegua´ , and Chango´, and some of whom problematize received notions about gender identity, such as Olokun and Obatala´). The fullest expression of oricha possession performance can look similar to the orgasm and aftermath of sexual ecstasy, which may cause additional anxiety and provide further justification for those who would dismiss or devalue the experience of oricha possession among some female adherents.

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(EN)GENDERING ORICHAS: THEOLOGICAL PRECEPTS AND RELIGIOUS PRACTICE It should be noted from the outset that neither the orichas nor the music that is performed for them is inherently female or male. Gendered and sexualized identities are projected onto orichas by their human adherents in an attempt to create and contain meaning. Africanist J. D. Y. Peel has written that orishas (Yoruba spelling) are simply powers, spirits, or forces. They ‘‘lack gender as a fixed or intrinsic attribute; gender conceptions are projected onto them.’’9 Peel goes on to say that orishas are the hidden forces that make things happen in the phenomenal world, and what people are first aware of is the existence of the force itself, not its gender. Illustrating this point, nineteenth-century Methodist missionary William Allen recorded his observations at Abeokuta, Nigeria, in 1859, when a large rock crashed down from a hill overlooking the town, narrowly missing a children’s play area. The rock was identified as an orisha because of its sudden and unstoppable force, and was classified as a female orisha because it did not harm any of the children.10 In the twentieth- and twenty-first-century Cuban practice of Ocha, the orichas have been anthropomorphized and assigned gender identities in a more fixed way than Peel’s characterization of Yoruba Ocha practice would suggest.11 Generalized oricha tropes in Cuba include the flirtatious mulata (Ochu´n), the great mother (Yemaya´), the virile king (Chango´), and the great father (Obatala´). But even the highly feminized orichas Ochu´n and Yemaya´ both have masculinized ‘‘roads’’ or avatars,12 masculine Obatala´ has several important feminized roads, and both virile Chango´ and paternal Obatala´ are syncretized with female Catholic saints (Santa Ba´rbara and La Vı´rgen de las Mercedes, respectively).13 In this chapter, I consider the projection of gendered and sexualized identities onto oricha possession performance within the context of the subjectivity of the possessed devotee, and the interiority from which that experience arises. In particular, I have been struck by the regularity with which certain experiences of oricha possession have been dismissed by drummers and lead singers at tambores. In my experience, although interest in the nature and ‘‘authenticity’’ of oricha possession is generally high at Ocha tambores in Havana,14 the phenomenon has become particularly contentious among Ocha practitioners who have emigrated from Cuba to the United States since the early 1960s (just after the 1959 Cuban Revolution) and up to the late 1990s. David H. Brown and Karen McCarthy Brown (no relation) have written persuasively of the challenges faced by Cubans and Haitians, respectively, in relocating Cuban Ocha and Haitian Vodou in the urban landscapes of the United States. Both authors have concluded that assimilation into the mainstream is tempered with a great deal of resistance, and that adaptability occurs in superficial ways to allow for the deeper meaning of

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ritual symbols to remain intact. I would argue that one of the ritual symbols in which Ocha practitioners are deeply invested is the phenomenon of oricha possession. This mystifying and powerful manifestation of orichas in a human context is nothing short of miraculous, especially in the United States—two steps removed from Ocha’s oft-cited origins in Yorubaland— and perhaps precisely because of this double dislocation, the ‘‘realness’’ of the phenomenon is regularly called into question.

SUBJECTIVITY, AUTHENTICITY, AND REPRESENTATION IN ORICHA POSSESSION PERFORMANCE Drummers and lead singers at a tambor may challenge the ‘‘authenticity’’ of an oricha possession in several ways. One way is to attempt to communicate with the newly arrived oricha through liturgical Lucumı´ phrases (Cuban interpretations of liturgical Yoruba phrases), delivered either through oriki (sung praises) or through drummed speech, via the bata´ drums. Another way is to determine whether the possessed devotee communicates specific information that he or she could not access in any way other than divine revelation. Yet a third way is through body sensations—not so much those sensations felt by the devotee, but rather those sensations felt by people who are trained in oricha worship and who are in close physical proximity to the possessed devotee.15 If none of those contexts inheres, the most devastating and final way to challenge the ‘‘authenticity’’ of oricha possession is simply to discount the phenomenon as false.16 The evaluative dynamic of ‘‘authenticity’’ highlights the conflict between the subjective and the social aspects of possession experience, specifically, who controls the narrative and the interpretation of this valued experience. The overall meaning of a tambor is constructed and negotiated by all its participants, but in Ocha tambores, the tendency is for the social interpretation of oricha possession to outweigh any one devotee’s particular subjective experience of it. The possession ‘‘vehicle’’ is thought to have little agency and only a dim awareness of an oricha manifestation. As a result, a devotee might feel the presence of an oricha, and act on that feeling, but if her actions do not match up with the expectations of drummers, lead singers, and elder Ocha priests and priestesses who are present at the tambor, that subjective experience is likely to be rejected as ‘‘false.’’ In my experience, devotees who undergo ‘‘full-on’’ possession do not seem to remember much about their experiences, and are not eager to render divine embodied revelation into narrative prose. Those who undergo milder possessions are more likely to remember some of their thoughts and feelings, and are more likely to express them verbally.17 I turn here to a brief discussion of subjectivity and interiority in an attempt to focus attention on the devotee’s experience and consciousness

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of oricha possession. I rely on literature from psychoanalytic theory and psychological anthropology not to pathologize spirit possession, but rather to locate it more clearly within the realms of individual experience and ‘‘interiority’’ which are encouraged and developed within other practices of Ocha, such as initiation.18 Psychotherapist and scholar Rina Lazar, in her article tracing the history of the concepts of subject, subjectivity, and intersubjectivity in psychoanalytic theory, defines the ‘‘subjective experience’’ as ‘‘the way in which the individual experiences what is happening to and within himself.’’ She also reminds us that ‘‘subjectivity per se, the allegedly primary experiential mode, is unavoidably context dependent.’’19 Lazar locates ‘‘the subjective’’ within the realm of epistemology, or the study of knowledge, because it questions how we know what we know and interrogates the concept of truth. She considers ‘‘subjectivity’’to be a phenomenological term because it represents the act of experiencing. During oricha possession, both the subjective experience of the devotee (i.e., the devotee’s interpretation and representation of the event) and the devotee’s subjectivity (i.e ,being possessed by an oricha) are called into question. Part of what is at stake, of course, is not only the interpretation of the possessed devotee’s experience, but the quality of his or her consciousness during the event, and thus the reliability of the devotee as a participant in her own narrative of the event. Vincent Crapanzano, in his brief article ‘‘The Etiquette of Consciousness,’’ identifies much spirit possession as ‘‘altered consciousness.’’ Within this category, he worries that ‘‘many of the accounts of altered states of consciousness . . . do not give due consideration to the prevailing etiquette of their representation and narration and its consequences . . . . They are occasions for interpretation.’’ And further, ‘‘We are haunted by the problem of other minds . . . . Can we trust what they say they are thinking? Feeling? Experiencing? . . . . [W]e cannot survive without recognizing the inevitable trickster quality of self-reportage.’’20 In Catherine Bell’s Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, she critiques the dualistic assumptions that inform much of Crapanzano’s and Bourguignon’s theorizing about possession, arguing that many anthropologists of religion suffer from a mind-body dualism, in which the anthropologist is the interpretive mind, and the possessed person is the mute body—acted upon, but in no way conscious of the meaning or (to summon Boddy) the ‘‘instrumentality’’ of her actions. Bell uses the work of Pierre Bourdieu and Julia Kristeva, among others, to theorize a ‘‘social body’’ in possession performance, which not only has agency, but directs her own instrumentality. I theorize that spiritual interiority is central to possession performance, and that it is interiority that not only facilitates oricha possession, but can render the possession vehicle ‘‘mute’’ if it is interpreted in a hostile or profanizing way. In other words, as readily as interiority can create a social body, it

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can also remove the body from social interaction. I use the term ‘‘interiority’’ here with specific reference to theology and phenomenology—an interior self-presence, an experience of the self from within, which cannot be externalized or objectified without changing it. I consider ‘‘interiority’’ to be of paramount significance in this discussion of oricha possession for several reasons: First, because interiority (in)forms an individual’s psyche; second, because self-awareness of interiority is the first step toward an authentic spiritual experience; and third, because one’s own interiority cannot be externalized, named, or narrated without changing it.

AUTO-APOTHEOSIS: THE ITA´ AND THE CONSTRUCTION OF THE SELF DURING OCHA INITIATION Let us consider an essential theological premise within Ocha, in which the orichas are understood to be aspects of the believer’s self. Autoapotheosis—that is, carrying the divine within ourselves—is not a new concept, but what is distinct about this theological proposition within Ocha is that these orichas are not simply ‘‘within us,’’ they are especially tailored to and responsive to and constitutive of the devotee’s personhood. In concrete terms, this means that at initiation, the devotee receives her own personal orichas, many with their own particular roads, which indicate spiritual temperament as well as specific taboos. Even more important at the initiation ceremony are the divined signs of the ita´ or life reading, which analyze the patterns of the devotee’s past, crystallize the present, and offer warnings about the future. During the ita´, each oricha speaks directly to the initiate through cowrie shell divination (diloggun), and the message of each oricha focuses primarily on that oricha’s domain, as well as the particular camino or road of that oricha that is most closely associated with the initiate. For example, the oricha Oya´ might speak to the initiate about problematic ancestral patterns that recur in the initiate’s life. This makes sense given Oya´’s association with the dead (she is said to be one of the guardians of the cemetery) and given her pivotal role in radical transformations, particularly within the family. As Michael Mason writes in his book Living Santerı´a, ‘‘The ita´ then results in an auto-apotheosis, which objectifies certain aspects of the initiate’s personality through the orichas and directs her how best to manifest these qualities in the outer world. These behaviors include all aspects of life: career choices to be made, religious performance traditions to master, family relationships to nurture or transform, and matters of the heart to weigh.’’21 The ‘‘auto-apotheosis’’ Mason refers to in the initiation process is precisely the process of interiorizing and realizing the divine within oneself. In the life of an initiate, this relationship with the orichas creates a strong sense of spiritual interiority, which then becomes the basis for

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potential oricha possession.22 But this spiritual interiority belongs only to the initiate; indeed, it is particular to the initiate. When oricha possession occurs, this spiritual interiority is manifested externally, which not only changes its nature, but allows for responses and evaluations by others. The transformed, private self is thus exposed and made vulnerable to the public. In the three vignettes of oricha possession that follow, this notion of ‘‘interiority’’ will be explored in several ways. First, in the case of a woman who feels she is possessed by Yemaya´, but who does not respond in a recognizable or acceptable way to the lead bata´ drummer; second, in the case of a mystifying, nonvocal oricha possession (Oya´), which is nonetheless deemed ‘‘authentic’’ by the presiding Ocha priest; and third, in the case of a possession performance (another manifestation of Yemaya´) which is considered ‘‘successful’’ by all in attendance.

THREE VIGNETTES OF POSSESSION PERFORMANCE Is Yemaya´ hard of hearing? This story was told to me in the same way by three people who attended a tambor held in Dorchester (a suburb of Boston) in February 2006. 23 Rey, a recently arrived Cuban drummer with a Matanzas lineage was asked to play at a tambor for Steve, a Cuban-born, locally-based Ocha priest whose religious training comes from Havana. (Matanzas and Havana are two important cities in western Cuba with a rich, and competing, heritage of Afro-Cuban religious traditions.) At the tambor, one of the devotees, a local woman, became possessed. From the way she moved and the things she said, it became apparent that Yemaya´ (oricha of the sea and of motherhood) had come down to inhabit this woman’s body. One of the things Yemaya´ does at the end of a tambor is to take a small tub of water, which has the energy of the spirits who were agitated by the drumming, and throw it out into the street, which completes the spiritually cleansing aspect of the tambor. This manifestation of Yemaya´ danced a bit, and then turned to throw out the tub of water. The Matanzas-trained drummer, however, had other plans for her, and started speaking to her on the bata´ drums, Matanzas-style. This type of musico-linguistic communication is quite normal, as the bata´ drums are said to ‘‘speak’’ the liturgical language of the Afro-Cuban Yoruba-descended deities through the approximation of tones and vowel sounds and key phrases. This Yemaya´, however, did not respond as the drummer had expected, and instead took the tub of water and emptied it out into the street, thus effectively ending the tambor. The drummer immediately assumed that Yemaya´ ’s nonresponsiveness to his drum cues was due to a lack of comprehension, and that the only reason for this lack of comprehension was that the Yemaya´ was ‘‘fake,’’ that is, that the woman had not really been possessed by an oricha but was ‘‘faking it,’’

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because a ‘‘real’’ Yemaya´ would have understood the drummed speech and responded accordingly. But let us consider for a moment the context and the characters of this tambor. The host of the tambor was a well-known Cuban-born Ocha priest (Santero), Steve, with roots in the province of Havana, who emigrated in the late 1950s to the United States, and was long-established in the Boston community as a religious authority figure with connections to several well-known academic institutions in the area, including Harvard and Boston Universities. The drummer, Rey, was a well-respected Cuban-born musician and dancer who arrived in Boston in the late 1990s, who has strong family and religious roots in Matanzas (the cradle of Afro-Cuban culture), and who became initiated into the religion in 2000. Having danced with premier Cuban folkloric group AfroCuba de Matanzas for 14 years, he is steeped in the Afro-Cuban performance traditions of Ocha and is considered an authority on Ocha songs and dances by the small but faithful community he teaches. Some of the Ocha priest’s assumptions are that everyone is welcome in his house, that Ocha (Santeria) is ‘‘Mother Nature’s religion,’’ and that it should be brought out into the open. According to Steve, he is on this earth to spread the word about his religion and to heal people.24 Some of Rey’s assumptions are that the Matanzas styles of drumming, dancing, and religious worship are the most efficacious and ‘‘authentic,’’ that people who are not from Matanzas don’t know as much about the songs, rhythms, or dances of Ocha as Matanzas residents do, and that Ocha practitioners in the United States are often clueless at tambores, and as a result of this ignorance, can rarely establish a ‘‘real’’ connection to the orichas. In the drummer’s estimation, the only acceptable interaction in an ‘‘authentic’’ oricha possession is for the oricha to respond positively to drummed liturgical speech, and if the oricha doesn’t, then the oricha must not have arrived. There seems to be no room in his interpretive framework for alternate explanations, such as that Yemaya´ was consciously ignoring the communicative pleas of the drummer, or that she didn’t pay attention to the drum language because she was concentrating on what was happening across the room. But for the sake of this presentation, let us accept the drummer’s interpretation of events in the following way: maybe the woman was feeling Yemaya´, and was permeated by that divine spirit, but it wasn’t the full-on possessed body experience that the drummer was expecting, so the hoped-for and expected interaction between drummer and oricha was sorely missed. Ocha priest Michael Mason points out that there are narratives and counter-narratives in contested oricha possessions. When I related the gist of this Boston possession performance to him, he wanted to know how the

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possessed devotee responded to the challenge that her oricha possession was ‘‘false.’’ At the time, she protested that Yemaya´ did indeed come to her, that she ‘‘felt’’ Yemaya´, and that Yemaya´ ‘‘made’’ her throw out the tub of water. But after this plea, she burst into tears, and left Ocha priest Steve’s house. As of December 2006, she had not returned to Ocha priest Steve’s house, nor had she spoken publicly about the event. Oya´’s got your tongue: At a drumming ceremony held in July 2006 in Washington, DC, at my padrino’s house, four orichas came down—Ochu´n, Oya´, Ochosi, and Elegua´. All of the people possessed at this tambor were women. Ochu´n, oricha of rivers and romantic love, came down and cried and cleaned people; Ochosi, warrior brother of Elegua´ and Ogu´n and expert hunter, moved around menacingly; and mischievous trickster oricha and deity of the crossroads Elegua´ took some candy from the altar. But the most intriguing of those possession performances was Oya´, warrior queen and guardian of the cemetery, precisely because she was slow to provide the verbal or physical cues that typically accompany an Ocha possession—gestures and phrases that have now become standardized, in part because of Cuba’s enduring project of folkloricization.25 The possession ‘‘vehicle’’ was a child of Oya´, but because of this initial lack of oricha affect, at first the attendees didn’t know which oricha had come down. After some confusing pantomimes, the woman who had become possessed put her left hand on her hip and began twirling the other high above her head, as if she were holding an iruke or flywhisk, a signal implement that Oya´ uses to stir up a whirlwind. The devotees watched and waited, hoping for more revelation. Oya´ then stretched out her right arm and pointed her hand in the direction of the assembled onlookers as she moved through them, walking with her left hand perched on her hip. She repeated these motions over and over again until they became a unifying dance movement, but the onlookers remained unsure of the meaning of this embodied revelation. After the tambor had ended, the padrino of the house determined the meaning of Oya´’s visit. The house had been in turmoil for the past couple of months—lots of chisme (gossip) and malicia (bad feelings). Oya´ was signaling to all involved (that is, all the members of the house) that it was time for transformation, and they were all implicated. This was a positive message, meant to suggest a strengthening of the community. She did not convey these thoughts verbally because her ‘‘vehicle’’ had not yet received the ache´ to speak.26 O mı´o Yemaya´: Yemaya´ arrived about half-way through my cumplean˜os de santo (the annual celebration honoring my 1998 initiation into Ocha) in 2000 in Los Angeles. My interest in the religious system of Ocha emerged from my love of bata´ drumming. In 1998, after ten years of attending folkloric and religious performances, and after eight years of studying bata´

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drumming with master drummers Alberto Villarreal and Francisco Aguabella, I felt prepared to acknowledge the divination sign (kariocha) that I had received from various Ocha priests several times a year since the early 1990s, which indicated the need to be initiated into Ocha. This religious tradition represented a radical departure from the belief systems with which I was familiar from childhood. My parents were from Presbyterian and Methodist families, and my friends practiced Judaism, Catholicism, and a variety of Protestant faiths. My sister and I were raised as secular humanists, but we often attended church and synagogue services with our friends and their families. The direct communication with the divine that I experienced in Ocha—through divination, dreams, oricha possession, and prayer— appealed to me, perhaps because of the strong personal connection I felt to the divine in the various religious contexts of my upbringing. This annual drumming ceremony to celebrate my initiation into Ocha allowed me to combine my love of bata´ drumming, my growing commitment to Ocha, and a community of like-minded friends and musicians. During my 2000 drumming ceremony, the bata´ drummers were led by my long-time teacher Francisco Aguabella, and the akpwo´n (ritual singer) was La´zaro Galarraga. Francisco and La´zaro had worked together for several years, and their relationship was good. La´zaro brought his wife and children to the tambor, so there were about seven children and fifteen adults at the celebration, including my padrino (or godfather, who had flown out from Washington, DC, for the event). I felt lucky to have such a musically adept group celebrating my orichas, and blessed to be able to share this experience with my ritual kin and friends. Toward the end of the tambor, La´ zaro’s wife, a priestess of Yemaya´, began dancing in front of the drummers and her husband. She began twirling low to the ground, as Yemaya´ often does when she comes down, and from within her full skirt came a heat that penetrated everyone within a few yards of her. As she moved around the room, we were compelled to move with her, attracted by the magnetic force of her head oricha. With this force came an emotional charge, a feeling of warmth, well-being, safety—the way one wants to feel in a mother’s arms. When she finally brought the tub of water to the door and threw it out into the street, we— her children by this point—were saddened by the loss of that blanket of warmth, the removal of that intensely maternal cloak. It was a reminder to us all of the essential nature of Yemaya´, and what that powerful love means to her children. The context for this tambor was quite positive—the drummers and singer knew and respected each other and had worked together before, the only oricha who came down that day was Yemaya´, and she chose her own child as a possession vehicle, a well-regarded ‘‘horse’’ who could communicate Yemaya´’s essence and presence clearly and compellingly. There were no grounds for disputing the

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nature of the possession performance that day, nor was there enmity between the musicians and the presiding Ocha priest. This was a harmonious tambor, and no one was accused of ‘‘fake possession.’’ In the section that follows, I consider these three vignettes in the context of current ritual theory—Janice Boddy’s ‘‘instrumentality,’’ Catherine Bell’s ‘‘social bodies,’’ and Mary Keller’s ‘‘instrumental agency’’—in an attempt to interpret the complex interaction between the protected space of spiritual interiority and the public exposure that accompanies (and helps create) oricha possession performance.

‘‘SOCIAL BODIES,’’ ‘‘INSTRUMENTALITY,’’ AND ‘‘INSTRUMENTAL AGENCY’’ Divine possession in Cuban Ocha is deeply responsive to the conditions of the mundane world, and indeed, often seeks to transform those conditions. As Janice Boddy notes in her wide-ranging review of the anthropological literature on possession, ‘‘[P]ossession widens out from the body and self into other domains of knowledge and experience—other lives, societies, historical moments, levels of cosmos, and religions—catching these up and embodying them [,which] ensures that possession cults are flexible and continuously transformative.’’27 But Boddy also urges us to move ‘‘beyond instrumentality,’’ that is, beyond the contentions of I. M. Lewis and other anthropologists that possession is often a means for the subaltern (usually women) to redress the imbalance of power, to attain for themselves in a spiritual context a ‘‘louder voice’’ than they may possess in the more secular aspects of their lives. Boddy reminds us that ‘‘If we focus on what women do, rather than on what they cannot do, we find them working in the spiritual realm on behalf of themselves, their families, households, or communities, channeling spirits’ assistance or heading off their wrath, protecting future generations, even protesting injustice.’’ Boddy coins the term ‘‘peripheral possession’’ to characterize what I would call ‘‘mild possession,’’ and she notes that this state of consciousness ‘‘is concerned with social domains for which women are typically assigned primary responsibility: kin ties, family health, social reproduction of community—often in the face of radical social change.’’28 It is for just such ‘‘mild’’ or ‘‘liminal’’ possessions that I offer the phrase ‘‘possession performance’’—which includes everything from so-called ‘‘fake’’ possession, ‘‘inappropriate’’ possession, ‘‘folkloric’’ and ‘‘mediated’’ possession, ‘‘mild’’ possession, ‘‘conscious’’ possession, to ‘‘full-on’’ possession—in an effort to accept the revelations that each of these events offers on its own terms.29 One could interpret all three possession vignettes as ‘‘occasions for interpretation,’’ in which the representation of the event is negotiated primarily by the observing adherents in attendance, and not by the devotee herself.

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One could also characterize each of the possessed devotees as ‘‘mute’’—by force of ridicule in the first case, because of the lack of ache´ to speak in the second case, and because of an acceptance of the divine embodiment as ‘‘authentic’’ (thus requiring neither defense nor explanation) in the third case. In the first vignette, which could be characterized as ‘‘peripheral’’ or ‘‘mild’’ possession, not only is the devotee’s experience discounted, it is dismissed. By dismissing the possession experience of the Ocha priest’s goddaughter, the drummer not only discredits the devotee but insults the presiding Ocha priest. The mildness of the devotee’s possession made her that much more vulnerable to potential ridicule and humiliation, precisely because she was somewhat aware of the ‘‘exposure’’ of her interior spiritual state during the possession performance. In the second vignette, the silent oricha possession could have been dismissed as ‘‘fake’’ by the musicians or the presiding Ocha priest, but in this case, the presiding Ocha priest chose to interpret the signs and signals of this possession performance as constitutive of divine revelation. The devotee’s interiority remained intact, and the divine message was conveyed to the other adherents through the interpretive framework provided by the Ocha priest. In the last vignette, there were no obvious tensions between the musicians and the rest of the adherents, and, significantly, the possessed devotee was an experienced and well-respected oricha vehicle. As a result, no one questioned the integrity of the event or the ‘‘authenticity’’ of the oricha possession, and there were no assaults on the inner spiritual state of the devotee. In her recent analysis of the scholarship on spirit possession, Mary Keller suggests that possession can be viewed as a ‘‘discursive space of theology,’’ obviating the question of whether possessions are ‘‘real’’ or ‘‘fake.’’30 Evoking Catherine Bell’s ‘‘social bodies,’’ Keller asserts an ‘‘instrumental agency,’’ in which the possession work performed by ancestors, divine entities, and spirits becomes increasingly important in the wake of global capitalism.31 Like Bell, Keller locates agency within the possessed body, and interprets these possessed bodies as ‘‘paradoxically powerful.’’32 I suggest that the initial ‘‘paradoxical power’’ of these bodies comes from their very vulnerability and receptivity to spirits and divinities, but that this exposure of spiritual interiority—part of the work of possession, if you will—is never without risk, and that possessed bodies can easily be rendered mute by the profaning gaze of onlookers. In Cuban Ocha, possession is interpreted as a female domain precisely because of the permeation of physical and psychic boundaries—brought about not only by the oricha inhabiting the body of the devotee, but by the music (especially the drumming) that penetrates the physical territory of the body (skin, ears, head). Oricha possession does not happen to everyone at a tambor, and those who are affected experience it in distinct ways, as we have seen. Further, those who are not experiencing oricha possession

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observe this process with awe and fascination. In possession performance, the body is compelled toward its physical limits, each extreme movement proof of the presence of an almost overwhelming force. But it is the very physicality of possession performance—the fact that it is the body that is a vehicle—that creates an anxious fascination on the part of the observer. The body, especially when isolated from the mind in a dualistic perspective, becomes vulnerable to profane projections, particularly by people who maintain the safe distance of the gaze. The oricha possession performance thus may become sexualized by the observer, allowing for not only the misinterpretation but the dismissal of the experience. The carefully tended spiritual interiority that gave rise to the possession performance may then be threatened and even damaged by such limited and hostile evaluations. Indeed, it is the very judgment or evaluation of the possession experience that sets the boundaries for sacred and profane. I return to Catherine Bell’s critique of mind-body dualism, in which the scholars are the interpretative ‘‘minds’’ and the possessed religious adherents are the mute ‘‘bodies.’’ In Cuban Ocha, the musicians—and especially the bata´ drummers—seem to have become the ‘‘minds’’ that interpret and adjudicate the quality of the possessed body’s experience. By declaring a possession performance ‘‘false,’’ the evaluator jettisons the experience from a sacred to a profane context, effectively silencing the narrative that might have been revealed. Keller reminds us that a preoccupation with the conscious agency of the possessed body has impeded our comprehension of the specialized subjectivity that possession may provide. There are many reasons why possession performance occurs. Some people (very few) are professional oricha possession vehicles; they are sought out by religious practitioners to perform at tambores precisely because of the facility and relative speed with which they can become possessed. Others (also very few) are possessed suddenly, with little knowledge or preparation for the experience. Still others (the vast majority) seek the type of spiritual revelation that includes oricha possession, and experience oricha possession performance in a variety of ways, from ‘‘mild’’ or ‘‘liminal’’ possession to ‘‘full-on’’ possession, and everything in between. If we become more tolerant of the full range of women’s experiences and representations of their own possession performances, we will be more likely to receive and appreciate the wide variety of their revelations.

NOTES 1. See Hugh Thomas, The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440–1870 (New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1997) and Rafael L Lo´pez-Valde´s, Africanos de Cuba (San Juan, Puerto Rico: Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe con la colaboracio´n del Instituto de

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Cultura Puertorriquen˜a, 2002), among others, for a comprehensive treatment of Cuba’s participation in the Atlantic slave trade. 2. Elegua, Echu (Orula), Ogun, Ochosi, Osun, Obatala, Oke, Chango, Ogue, Babalu Aye, Nana Buruku, Oya, Yemaya, Olokun, Oricha Oko, Ibeiji, Dada, Osain, Inle, Agayu, Orula, Obba, Yewa, Ochun, Aye, for example. 3. The ethnographic research of Fernando Ortı´z, Los Instrumentos de la Mu´sica Afrocubana, Vol. 4 (La Habana: Direccio´n de Cultura del Ministerio de Educacio´n, 1954); Marı´a Teresa Ve´lez, Drumming for the Gods: The Life and Times of Felipe Garcı´a Villamil, Santero, Palero and Abakua´ (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000); Katherine Johanna Hagedorn, Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santerı´a (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press. 2001); Michael D. Marcuzzi, ‘‘A Historical Study of the Ascendant Role ` rı`sa` Worship,’’ PhD diss., York University, Toronto, of Ba`ta´ drumming in Cuban O 2005; and Amanda Vincent, ‘‘Bata Conversations: Guardianship Narratives about the Bata in Nigeria and Cuba.’’ PhD diss., School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK, 2006, among others, supports this finding. 4. Indeed, one of the most well-respected and sought-after Cuban akpwo´nes was the late, great La´zaro Ross, an openly gay man. 5. Ruth Landes, The City of Women (New York: MacMillan, 1947); J. Lorand Matory, Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomble´ (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 1995); Paul Christopher Johnson, Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomble´ (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 47; and others have written persuasively about gender and spirit possession in Brazilian Candomble´. Johnson in particular asserts that within the gender logic of Candomble´, ‘‘all orixa´s mount and are ‘male,’ while all horses [possession vehicles] of the gods are ‘female’ and wives.’’ The orisha worship practices of both Cuba and Brazil share a common origin, so Brazilian Candomble´ is useful for understanding how orisha worship developed elsewhere in the New World. 6. See Judith Becker, Deep Listeners: Music, Emotion, and Trancing (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press), 37. 7. See Becker, Deep Listeners, 61. See also pp. 60–67, where Becker explores the semiotic, metaphoric, and physicological relationship between trancing and the sexual act. 8. Personal communications with Cuban olu´ bata´ Alberto Villarreal, 1998— 2003; personal communications with Cuban-born olu´ bata´ Francisco Aguabella, 2000—2003. It is interesting to note that American-born bata´ drummer David Font interprets these exhortations to be similar to cheering one’s team at an athletic event and disavows any sexual reference (David Font, personal communication, Atlanta, GA, October 2005). 9. See J. D. Y. Peel, ‘‘Gender in Yoruba Religious Change,’’Journal of Religion in Africa 32 (2002): 136.

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10. See the records of the Church Missionary Society, CA2 O18, J. 1859. 11. See the work of Joseph Murphy, Santerı´ a: An African Religion in America, Revised Edition (Boston: Beacon Press. 1992) and David H. Brown, Santerı´a Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), for example. 12. These ‘‘roads’’ (caminos in Spanish) are manifested when a person becomes initiated as a priest or priestess in Ocha. Before the initiation, the person’s ‘‘head oricha’’ is divined, and during the initiation, the priest in charge of the initiation ceremony determines not only the particular aspect or road of the head oricha which is most closely associated with the initiate, but also the roads of the other orichas who will help the initiate fulfill his or her destiny. 13. Ochu´ n is syncretized with La Vı´ rgen de la Caridad del Cobre, and Yemaya´ is syncretized with La Vı´rgen de Regla in Cuba. 14. See Hagedorn, Divine Utterances, 73–85, for example. 15. Personal communication, Ocha priest Michael Mason, May 11, 2007. 16. It should be noted that Ocha priests do recognize variation in oricha possession, such as a ‘‘mild possession’’ in which a devotee may end up blurting out things she/he would not normally say as a result of an oricha’s nearby presence (Michael Mason, personal communication, May 8, 2007). Musicians at a tambor tend to judge these experiences more harshly and definitively than ‘‘full-on’’ possession performances. 17. Personal communications with members of Alberto Villarreal’s extended ritual family in Guanabacoa and in Santos Sua´rez, 1994–2003; personal communications with Michael Mason and members of his extended ritual family in Washington, D.C., 1994–2007; personal communications with members of Ocha communities in London, Toronto, Los Angeles, and Boston, 2005–2007. 18. It is instructive to consider the work of Vincent Crapanzano and Vivian Garrison, Case Studies in Spirit Possession (New York: John Wiley, 1978) here, in which they have suggested that spirit possession may represent an ‘‘alternate therapy,’’ a prophylaxis more responsive to a person’s specific life circumstances than other modes of intervention. 19. See Rina Lazar, ‘‘Subject in First Person—Subject in Third Person: Subject, Subjectivity, and Intersubjectivity,’’ The American Journal of Psychoanalysis 61, No. 3 (2001): 272–74. 20. See Crapanzano, Case Studies in Spirit Possession, 5–7. 21. See Michael A. Mason, Living Santerı´a: Rituals and Experiences in an AfroCuban Religion (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002), 81. 22. Michael D. Marcuzzi, ‘‘A Historical Study of the Ascendant Role of Ba`ta´ ` rı`sa` Worship.’’ PhD diss., York University, Toronto, 2005 Drumming in Cuban O suggests that oricha possession is another form of divination. 23. I was unable to attend this tambor, and so relied on reports from friends and colleagues who were there.

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24. For an interview with Ocha priest Steve, see Johnny Diaz, ‘‘ ‘This Is Mother Nature’s Religion’: Once-secretive Santerı´a Faith Brings its Healing Message into the Open,’’ Boston Globe, Living Arts section, November 4, 2004. 25. See Hagedorn, Divine Utterances, for an analysis of the process of folkloricization in post-revolutionary Cuba. 26. Ache´ is a Yoruba concept that conveys divine empowerment. This particular oricha’s vehicle had not yet undergone the ceremony that would allow her to speak the words of an oricha. 27. See Janice Boddy, ‘‘Spirit Possession Revisited: Beyond Instrumentality,’’ Annual Review of Anthropology 23 (1994): 414. 28. See Ibid., 416. 29. Becker provides an encompassing and useful definition of ‘‘trancing,’’ including secular trancing, which accounts for analogous parameters of behavior (38–44). Similarly, Rita Segato’s fieldwork on Afro-Brazilian Candomble´ yielded a variety of terms for describing a range of possession behaviors. 30. See Mary Keller, The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power and Spirit Possession (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002), 86. 31. See Ibid., 124. 32. See Ibid., 73.

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Brown, David H. ‘‘Altared Spaces: Afro-Cuban Religions and the Urban Landscape in Cuba and the United States.’’ In Gods of the City, edited by Robert Orsi. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Brown, David H. Santerı´ a Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Crapanzano, Vincent. ‘‘The Etiquette of Consciousness.’’ Social Research. 22 September 22, 2001. Crapanzano, Vincent, and Vivian Garrison, eds. Case Studies in Spirit Possession. New York: John Wiley, 1977. Damasio, Antonio. The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1999. Dı´az, Johnny. ‘‘ ‘This is Mother Nature’s Religion’: Once-secretive Santerı´a Faith Brings its Healing Message into the Open.’’ Boston Globe, Living Arts section. November 4, 2004. Falola, Toyin, and Anne Genova, eds. Orisa: Yoruba Gods and Spiritual Identity. Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 2005. Frith, Simon. Performing Rites. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. Goldschmidt, Henry, and Elizabeth McAlister, eds. Race, Nation, and Religion in the Americas. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Hagedorn, Katherine Johanna. Divine Utterances: The Performance of AfroCuban Santerı´a. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. Hall, David D., ed. Lived Religion in America: Toward a History of Practice. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997. Holloway, Joseph, ed. Africanisms in American Culture. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. Johnson, Paul Christopher. Secrets, Gossip, and Gods: The Transformation of Brazilian Candomble´. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Keller, Mary. The Hammer and the Flute: Women, Power and Spirit Possession. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002. Kristeva, Julia. ‘‘Motherhood According to Bellini.’’ In Desire in Language, edited by Leon Roudie.. New York: Columbia University Press, 1980. Landes, Ruth. The City of Women. New York: MacMillan, 1947. Lazar, Rina. ‘‘Subject in First Person—Subject in Third Person: Subject, Subjectivity, and Intersubjectivity.’’ The American Journal of Psychoanalysis 61, No. 3 (2001): 271–91. Leppert, Richard, and Susan McClary, eds. Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance, and Reception. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987. Lewis, I M. Ecstatic Religion: A Study of Shamanism and Spirit Possession. 3rd Edition. London: Taylor and Francis, Ltd, 2002.

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Lo´pez-Valde´s, Rafael L. Africanos de Cuba. San Juan, Puerto Rico: Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe con la colaboracio´n del Instituto de Cultura Puertorriquen˜a, 2002. Marcuzzi, Michael D. ‘‘A Historical Study of the Ascendant Role of Ba`ta´ drum` rı`sa` Worship.’’ PhD diss. York University, Toronto, 2005. ming in Cuban O Marcuzzi, Michael D. ‘‘A Comparative Examination of the Ipano´du` Ceremony and its Implications for a Multilocal Approach to Constituting the History of the ` rı`sa` People.’’ In Orisa: Yoruba Gods and Spiritual Identity, edited by Toyin O Falola and Anne Genova. 183–207. Trenton, NJ: African World Press, 2005. Mason, Michael A. Living Santerı´a: Rituals and Experiences in an Afro-Cuban Religion. Washington, D.C. Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002. Matory, J. Lorand. Black Atlantic Religion: Tradition, Transnationalism, and Matriarchy in the Afro-Brazilian Candomble´. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2005. Maultsby, Portia. ‘‘Africanisms in African-American Music.’’ In Africanisms in American Culture, edited by Joseph E. Holloway. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990. McCarthy Brown, Karen. ‘‘Staying Grounded in a High-Rise Building: Ecological Dissonance and Ritual Accommodation in Haitain Vodou.’’ In . Gods of the City, edited by Robert Orsi. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. McClary, Susan.Feminine Endings: Music, Gender, and Sexuality. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1991. Murphy, Joseph. Santerı´a: An African Religion in America. Revised Edition. Boston: Beacon Press, 1992. Murphy, Joseph M., and Mei-Mei Sanford, eds. Osun across the Waters. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2001. Orsi, Robert, ed. Gods of the City. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999. Ortı´z, Fernando. Los Instrumentos de la Mu´sica Afrocubana, Vol. 4. La Habana: Direccio´n de Cultura del Ministerio de Educacio´n, 1954. Peel, J. D. Y. Religious Encounter and the Making of the Yoruba. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Peel, J. D. Y. ‘‘Gender in Yoruba Religious Change.’’Journal of Religion in Africa 32 (2002): 136–66. Pryor, Andrea. ‘‘The House of An˜a´: Women and Bata´.’’ CBMR Digest 12, No. 2 (1999): 6–8. Rouget, Gilbert. Music and Trance: A Theory of the Relations between Music and Possession. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1985. Sayre, Elizabeth. ‘‘Cuban Bata´ Drumming and Women Musicians: An Open Question.’’ CBMR Digest 13, No. 1 (2000): 12–15. Segato, Rita. ‘‘Persona y divinidad en la tradicio´n Afro-brasileira: Notas para la comprensio´n del sujeto psı´quico en el complejo religioso del Candomble´.’’ Journal of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (1993).

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Shepherd, John. ‘‘Music and Male Hegemony.’’ In Music and Society: The Politics of Composition, Performance, and Reception, edited by Richard Leppert and Susan McClary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 151–72. Thomas, Hugh. The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade, 1440– 1870. New York: Simon & Schuster Paperbacks, 1997. Ve´ lez, Marı´a Teresa. Drumming for the Gods: The Life and Times of Felipe Garcı´a Villamil, Santero, Palero and Abakua´. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2000. Vincent, Amanda. ‘‘Bata Conversations: Guardianship Narratives about the Bata in Nigeria and Cuba.’’ PhD diss. School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, UK, 2006.

CHAPTER

8

African Descendent Women and Religion: Diaspora in Oriente Cuba Jualynne E. Dodson

I

t should be impossible to discuss new and Creole religions in the Americas without including, if not focusing, on women. However, we still do not have a clear understanding of how and where women helped in building religions in this region of the world. We know that African descendants were directly influential in creating Creole traditions and, after initially encountering conquests in the Americas, women were part of the enslaved populations that helped shape the 54 countries and territories of the Americas1, and I assume they also helped form religions. This is especially true for Cuba where the eastern area of Oriente was the site of religious beginnings for traditions distinctive to the island. These indigenous religions, those sacred practices created from colonial interaction and ritual exchanges between native Cuban Indians, Africans, and Europeans, are traditions distinct to Cuba. The most prominent of these are Muerte´ra Bembe´ de Sao, Reglas Conga, Arara´, Vodu´, Abakua´, Espiritismo, and Regla Ocha/Lucumi.Of these, only Abakua´ is not practiced in Oriente, and women are visible and public leaders in almost all of these religions. For some time, the African Atlantic Research Team (AART) of Michigan State University has been studying indigenous religious practices of Oriente with special attention to women. We found that even as each of the 6–7 distinct Cuban religions can be set apart one from the other, most Oriente

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practitioners use rituals from more than one religion, but under the heading of a single tradition. We labeled this habit of multiple practices by/in a single religion as ‘‘integrated religious multiplicity.’’ The multiplicity occurs because practitioners understand specific customs of their religious devotion but are comfortable in including ritual acts from alternative traditions. The added rituals are integrated into their spiritual work as normal, and we therefore label the practice, integrated religious multiplicities. Based on research findings of the team, this chapter attempts to present an introductory overview of Cuban religions as they are carried out in Oriente within the integrated religious multiplicity that characterizes the region. However, I want to focus attention on where and how women can be found in four of these practices. Discussion in the chapter is based on more than 10 years of historical, documentary, and field research done in Cuba by the African Atlantic Research Team (AART) for which I am the director. As such, the generalized statements I make are from our team’s analysis of information from those documents, observations, participations, and interviews. I begin the chapter with a brief overview of methods, showing how our team was able to gain its comprehensions. This discussion is followed by an even briefer presentation of significant historical circumstances that brought Africa-based ritual foundations to Cuba. After the historical review, there will be an exploration of basic appreciations of the four selected traditions with clarification of women’s participation. My assumption is that we need to understand the continuous context of human actions if we wish to truly appreciate why and how they do what they do. I find this to be particularly true for Cuba, its religions, and women’s contributions to them. The chapter concludes with a summary of significant aspects of women’s involvement in the religious traditions. I begin with how the African Atlantic Research Team came to know indigenous religions of Cuba.

METHODS It has taken AART members several years to gain academic and experiential knowledge about Cuban religions and women but, as director of the team, it took me even longer because I first had to learn Spanish, then learn particulars of the religions, and finally become culturally competent within rituals of those sacred practices. All of this took more than eight years wherein I traveled to Oriente Cuba at least once a year, from June through August, but I also was in the country two to threee other times each year, never for less than three weeks. During some of these travels, AART members and I conducted systematic observations with communities of devotees of all the religious traditions,

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observing lifestyles as well as ritual practices. Other team members followed my entree into this field research site and, after approximately three years, they were sufficiently familiar within the religious communities that practitioners invited all of us to join them in select sacred activities. These experiences were participant observations and several of our Cuban colleagues even agreed to interviews. This allowed us to cross-check information we gathered from observations as well as to cross-check information received from others in interviews. We supplemented all of this field research information by carefully reviewing historical documents, in Cuba and in the United States. The combination of methods of gathering information has permitted the team and me to become well-informed, non-Cuban persons who have basic competency about indigenous religious practices among African Diasporan peoples of this important island. This chapter is an introductory discussion that reflects what we learned, and, hopefully, it demonstrates the respect AART has for our practitioner friends.

HISTORICAL BEGINNINGS Cuba is the largest of those Caribbean land spaces referred to as the Greater Antilles—the larger islands of the West Indies. Cuba is located at access points to the Atlantic Ocean, the Gulf of Mexico, the Caribbean Sea, the Florida Keys, the Yucatan Peninsula, Haiti, and Jamaica. The location made Cuba central to colonial activities from the sixteenth century forward. The island is 750 miles in length with nearly 22 miles at its narrowest point in the west and 124 miles at its widest point in the east. There are more than 200 harbors, bays, and inlets on the approximately 2,500 miles of coast, and Cuba has three distinct mountain ranges. The highest of these, the Sierra Maestra, is located in the eastern, Oriente region. The Siboney are among the Indian people known to have inhabited parts of Cuba long before Europeans arrived, but it was the ‘‘sub-Taı´no’’ and Taı´no of Arawak origins who remained to meet the Spanish in the 1490s. The Taı´no lived in villages of up to 2,000 occupants and made their livelihood through gathering roots and fruits, agriculture, and fishing. 2 However, almost immediately upon their arrival, the Spanish began to use members of the Indian population as slave labor. By the time Africans were authorized as replacement workers, most organized Indian communities had disappeared through death, physical abuse, assimilation, and/or miscegenation.3 The miscegenation and assimilation were intercommunal, through sexual contact with Indian women. Spanish immigrants without European women began to establish social roots in the Caribbean as early as 1492 and, when Christopher Columbus and his male crews returned in 1493 and 1494, they explored much of the

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northern and southern coastlines of Cuba. In 1502, ‘‘[N]egro slaves or other slaves born in the power of Christians’’ had been authorized by the dual rulers of Spain, Ferdinand and Isabella to be imported from Spain to the Caribbean.4 Spanish participation in the slave trade was solidified by 1512 when clergy petitioned the Catholic Church to stop the inhumane treatment of Indians and allow colonists to substitute captive Africans. The first continental African workers were purchased from sixteenth-century Portuguese and other European trans-Atlantic traders, and the earliest enslaved Africans entered Cuba at ports in Oriente. 5 By 1515, seven island settlements were in place: Baracoa (1512), Bayamo (1513), Trinidad (1514), Sancti Spı´ritus (1514), Havana (1514), Puerto Prı´ncipe (1514), and Santiago de Cuba (1515). Even though the significance of Africans’ presence in Cuba is historically associated with expansions in lucrative agriculture and other enterprises, it was mining that initially brought European colonists and their enslaved workers to the island. The first copper mine in the Americas was opened in a small sixteenth-century Oriente community outside of Santiago de Cuba, Santiago del Prado, currently known as El Cobre.6 Mining continued to have a foothold in the eastern portion of the Spanish colony with enslaved Africans as the vast majority of mine laborers. Several historians report that the number of Africans in Oriente grew in the sixteenth century as the region received hundreds of bozales —enslaved persons born in Africa.7 In addition, European, particularly English, ships secretly entered Cuba’s southeast harbors with illegal cargos of enslaved Africans. This enlarged their presence even more.8 Through the seventeenth century, additional enslaved persons from Jamaica and St. Domingue, now Haiti, escaped bondage and traveled to Oriente. Records do not report that women were among these early migrations, but we know they were present in communities organized by those Africans who liberated themselves from bondage, communities called palenques. Palenques, or settlements of persons who ran away from enslavement, existed mostly in the mountainous eastern and western regions of Cuba rather than in the relatively flat terrain of the island’s central sections. It is estimated that there were some 300 palenques in Oriente, as its mountainous Sierra Maestra provided excellent hiding places. At least one of the settlements, named Maluala, was strategically fortified to house women and children. Historical reports note that Maluala was constructed for maximum protection of women and children when male members from other palenques were collaboratively waging military-like battles and campaigns against colonial forces hired to return everyone to bondage.9 Two Cuban research colleagues reported that a woman of Indian descent was the ‘‘captain’’ of an Oriente palenque.10

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Equally important regarding palenques is that these free settlement zones developed as centers of ritual practice that had begun evolving with the earliest contact between Indians and arriving Africans. Members of the two cultural communities formed mutual relations as early as 1533, when they jointly attacked the Spanish settlement at Baracoa. A legendary musical chant that continues to be part of Oriente ritual life indicates the cross-cultural relationship. The chant says, ‘‘Indians met Africans in Cuba and now the Indian is African.’’11 The integrity of the legend can be found in overlapping understandings of each cultural community regarding human participation in the universal order; overlaps may be perceived in their cosmic orientation. Both cultural groups understood that humans and spirits could communicate with each other. From such a mutual appreciation of the world, Indians are said to have shown colonial Africans how to use the plants and animals of the landscape to communicate with spirits of the other world, particularly the use of tobacco in rituals. Africans contributed drum rhythms and specialized language for engaging spirits, and members from each group employed the combined ritual behaviors to bury their dead in the land space the Spanish claimed as a colony. The behaviors were transmitted to new generations in palenques and other locations. Descendants used the combined rituals, undergirded by common understandings about the world—shared cosmic orientation—to build religious practices. Africans from different ethnic groups also inhabited colonial Cuba, including the palenque free zones. Descendant Kikongo speakers of the African Kongo Kingdom, areas we now recognize as Gabon, Angola, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, are known to have been Africa’s strongest cultural contributors among early colonial occupants. Members of these ethnic groups were also among the first enslaved Africans in Oriente and, together with Indians, they appear to have set the foundation of ritual practices that would transfer into religious traditions. 12 Palo Monte/ Mayombe and Muerte´ra Bembe´ de Sao are two religions selected for focus in this chapter, and both are associated with the Cuban Kongo African heritage. Both also are religious customs practiced in contemporary Oriente. Women and men of Africa’s Fon-Ewe/Adja ethnic communities were among members of colonial Oriente and palenque settlements, but the largest numbers of their heritage did not reach the region until the eighteenth century. The significant influx was associated with rebellious activities in Haiti, the Haitian Revolution, and the substitution of Cuba as dominant in the sugar trade. Most of the Fon-Ewe/Adja presence and influence in Oriente is a Haitian by-product as these communities introduced Haitian Vodou to eastern Cuba. However, like most things Cuban, Haitian African religious features were joined with, and modified through encounters with

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other Africans in Cuba, previous elements of Indians and of Cuban European colonists. Cuban Vodu´ was the result and, contemporarily, it is practiced mainly in Oriente. Vodu´ is the third religion selected for focus in this chapter, and women are publicly visible sacred leaders in this tradition. The final Cuban religion of interest to this brief historical review is Espiritismo. It too is a focus of this chapter, and its beginnings were also in Oriente. However, Espiritismo did not appear in Cuba until the middle of the nineteenth century, and then from Europe and the United States, not from an African base. At the same time, Cuba’s African heritage so influenced the adaptation of French Spiritism combined with the Spiritualism from the United States that the resulting practices are wholly Cuban. The island’s appropriation of these religious practices began in the second decade of the second half of the nineteenth century—the 1860s. This was a time when most inhabitants had been born in Cuba and an enthusiastic nationalism was widespread. Much of the population was postured in armed struggle against Spanish colonialism in favor of national independence. Although they lost the ‘‘1868 Ten Years War,’’ Cubans’ desire to control their nation did not go away. In 1895, as they had done earlier, African and European descendants, including women, joined military forces to fight for independence. And as before, together the insurgent rebellions employed the island’s distinct ritual practices to heighten their courage and calm anxieties.13 These ritual activities were outlines for a characteristically Cuban religious tradition of the Espiritismo family, Espiritismo Cordon. However, social and historical beginnings of the entire religious family, including their differences, are distinctive to Oriente. With these exceptionally brief but sufficient historical origins, I can now turn to essential descriptions and sacred comprehensions about each of the four religions of interest to this chapter; Muerte´ra Bembe´ de Sao, Palo Monte/Mayombe, Vodu´, and Espiritismo Cordon. The intent is to identify where and how contemporary Oriente women participate.

THE RELIGIONS MUERTE´RA BEMBE´ DE SAO This tradition may be the oldest of African-based sacred rituals in Oriente. The question is whether it is a consistent set of religious practices and/or whether its distinct activities can be historically associated with the colonial history of African descendants of Cuba. Without waiting for historical confirmation, our research team had direct contact and ritual experiences with Oriente practitioners of Muerte´ra Bembe´ de Sao and found that their

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activities contain customs that clearly mark an association with Cuba’s Kongo heritage. One such marker custom is the central use of the large, taller, and deeper toned hand drums associated with Cuban Kongo traditions. Contemporary practitioners told us that their customs came from older Muerte´ra Bembe´ de Sao devotees who had been palenque inhabitants. These respondents understood that the older rituals occurred out of doors, in small wooded clearings that were surrounded by a forested area. We were told that the elder devotees, ‘‘ . . . played the conga drums and sang songs about how the ancestors lived.’’ Women were an integral part of palenques and joined in this ritual work. Today, women are a 2:1 majority of Muerte´ra practitioners in the community of our research observations, and we spent considerable time with the female leader. This African descendant woman is well known in the city of Santiago de Cuba, where religious practitioners of all traditions speak of her as ‘‘the powerful Espiritista.’’ Muerte´ra rituals depend on the playing of Kongo-type drum rhythms, uttering chants, singing sacred songs, and dancing, all from the Cuban Kongo heritage. Practitioners contend that these activities are sacred invocations that alter the atmosphere of everyday life and allow visitations from muertos—specific spirits. Of note is that research team members were present when one such male muerto, Francisco, came to the female leader of the Muerte´ra community. No one was ill-at-ease with a male spirit taking a female body, and the information/wisdom imparted was taken with exceptional seriousness. Even more central to the character of Muerte´ra rituals is the highly elaborated cazuela, the bowl-like container that holds sacred instruments and artifacts of the tradition. The leader of the religious community of our interviews described the vessel’s contents as ‘‘things that are powerful and effective for use in helping us bring spiritual well-being’’ to all community members. On more than three occasions, our team observed ritual activities where everyone who appeared—member of the community or not— was welcomed and many were given information by Francisco. The cazuela we observed was exceptionally large and stuffed to overflow with sticks, rocks, bones, twigs, nails, chains, and much more; all were covered with remnants of previous animal sacrifices. The religious leader conducts her spiritual work, receives spirits, and offers sacrifices in front of this ritual instrument. Sacred activities are focused on sufficiently altering the atmosphere of human life in order that spirits may visit and take part in the customary efforts of the sacred undertakings and that humans may communicate with the spirit world. The religion understands that rituals are required as part of humans’ responsibility within the reciprocal and revered relationship they have with the world of spirits; a reciprocal relationship that

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is foundational to the religion’s cosmic orientation—its world view. Successful visits and communication by spirits are an astonishing manifestation that divine forces of the cosmos are and continue to be with the African descendant practitioners and their worship community.

PALO MONTE/MAYOMBE Palo Monte/Mayombe is one of Cuba’s several reglas conga—rules of conga—and is similarly derived from a region in West Central Africa that was associated with Kongo Kingdom ethnic groups. The reglas conga have differing names that correspond with the various territories and ethnic groups in that region.14 Palo is the most popular of these Cuban reglas and the most recognized in Oriente. Linguists have found that much of the ritual language of this indigenous tradition in Oriente continues from colonial speakers from ethnic groups of the Kongo Kingdom.15 Practice of Palo Monte/Mayombe emphasizes contact with elements of nature and contact with spirits: mfundi/nfumbe, generalized spirits of the dead; mpongo/npungo, specialty spirits of nature; and remains of the recently departed, the living dead. The importance of spirits is a religious marker for Palo and a generalized cultural attitude throughout Cuba’s eastern region. However, all over the island, inhabitants consider traditions that work with spirits and remnants of the dead to be the most complex, the most powerful, and the most effective. We heard this from citizens in Pinar del Rio in the extreme west, to those in Guanta´ namo in the extreme east. Many also acknowledged fear, hesitancy, and respect, specifically for Palo Monte/ Mayombe. The organized set of rituals associated with Palo arrived in Oriente in early decades of the twentieth century with migrants from western Cuba16, but knowledge, ideas, and behaviors from Kongo Kingdom ethnic groups arrived in the east much earlier,in sixteenth and seventeenth colonial centuries.The earlier Oriente comprehensions were part of African and native Indians’ individual and combined cultural emphases on communicating with the spirit world and working with spirits of the living dead. Contemporary practitioners refer to the collectivity of spirits as muertos— the dead—though they distinguish within the larger group. Like their colonial ancestors, today’s religious adherents understand that spirits are active in the material world of humans, and humans are obligated to maintain an active relationship with muertos who, reciprocally, can be called on to help humans accomplish goals. Spirits also can contact human devotees in order to transmit knowledge and wisdom to help guide life in the present world. Spirits of all categories have no gender-specific designations, and neither are receivers of spirit communications gender-specific. Women are eligible and do receive spirit

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wisdom just as the female aspect or avatar of spirits can be called upon for assistance. One of the most fundamental components of Palo Monte/Mayombe sacred work is the nganga. This is the iron caldron, usually with three legs, that holds consecrated elements from natural arenas of the world. Only initiated Palo practitioners, called paleros, can possess this ritual instrument and women are so eligible. We are familiar with the Palo legend of the enslaved colonial woman, Carlota of Matanzas who is known to have been the first woman to have an nganga. Carlota was one of three leaders of the 1844 Triunvidato uprising of enslaved persons in that western region of Cuba.17 Family is a fundamental idea for practitioners of Palo Mayombe. Blood relationships, initiated members of a practicing religious community, and spirits associated with the religion are all incorporated in the definition of a ˜ sambe—divine Creator—is at the apex or head of all family single ‘‘family.’’ N in the universal world, including humans’ families. The human mother of a practicing community is the Yayi, and her presence is mandatory as a guide for spiritual affairs of an entire worship community. There also is a human father, the TaTa Nganga with whom the Yayi works. The Yayi is ‘‘confidante’’ to the TaTa but cannot be his wife. There can be as many Yayi as there are TaTa in a given community. The ultimate sacred object that the Yayi and TaTa use to conduct spiritual work is the nganga, containing consecrated objects that possess the sacred essence imparted by the Creator to all created things of the Universe. Some objects in the nganga also hold the presence of ancestral or other powerful spirits. There is a four-way collaboration between: 1) the two human family leaders, 2) the caldron religious instrument, 3) material objects within the nganga, and the spirits within each of these. All combine to direct and instruct human family members of a Palo community toward effective living. All potential members of Palo Mayombe are required to experience symbolic, spiritual ‘‘re-birth through the Nganga’’ by way of an embele— scratching rite of initiation. Although the embele can be a scarification, usually of the arm, in Oriente we were only familiar with slight scratches on the body that disappear within a week or two. The TaTa and Yayi ritualistically accomplish this event, and they are then ‘‘godparents’’ to all initiated members of a given community. They also are the leaders to be consulted for assistance in resolving personal as well as spiritual problems. Everyone understands that everything is spiritual because problems of life are regularly interconnected to spiritual matters. In addition to Yayi, women hold positions of Madre Nkisi, mother with power that makes things happen; Madre de Agua, mother of water; and

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Madre Nganga mother of an nganga. The ranking of these positions is rarely spoken about but regularly enacted, wherein Madre Nganga would be the highest, most respected position; Madre Nkisi next, and Madre de Agua as the last of these authority rankings. However, power does not rest merely in positions of authority but in a woman’s actualized ability to ‘‘make things happen.’’ Labels and positions delineate ritual responsibility and significance of the individual’s power potentials, if actualized. If there are no actual expressions of religious power, the label and position of the individual may merely reflect previous accomplishments. At the same time, for a woman to be given a position indicates that religious spirits have identified her as a person who does have, or can receive, the ability and knowledge to make things happen. A Madre de Agua, for example, can make things happen in accordance with spirit force or forces associated with large bodies of moving waters, that is, oceans, seas, and gulfs. She may possess an nganga but usually does not. Madre Nkisi can make things happen as well, but her work is not delimited to spirit forces associated with any particular natural phenomenon. She too may possess an nganga, as the caldron is the heart of sacred ritual life and is known to contain the prenda or the extremely powerful spirit designated for use by the initiated person who owns a consecrated instrument. Every nganga has aprenda, and Madre Nkisi may possess an nganga but she cannot perform the religion’s embele—scratch ritual of initiation. Madre Nganga, on the other hand, possesses an nganga, can make things happen in collaboration with spirits associated with the cauldron as well as other such forces, and she has the ability to perform the embele initiation ritual. An nganga is usually consecrated to a woman by the TaTa Nganga of her practicing community. Women, particularly Yayi and/or Madre Nganga are required to be in attendance at many of the sacred ceremonies and rituals of Palo. However, there rarely is much published material or other public discussion about Oriente women with nganga or other religious powers of Palo. Uninformed observers would seldom recognize women’s significance in the religion, even if they observed rituals and other sacred activities. For example, women are often the numerical minority of participants in a variety of Palo ceremonies, thus giving the impression that they are unimportant and/or without religious power. However, in these instances, at least one woman—a Yayi, Madre Nganga, or Madre Nkisi— among those who are present holds an authority position. Without the presence of one woman in one of these categories, some religious activities cannot proceed. This is important as it means that women’s numerical presence or absence in Palo activities does not necessarily mean they are powerless within the tradition. As far as we can determine, the tradition does not

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specify the number of women or men to be present at a given event, but it definitely requires that individuals with certain spirit-identified powers be in attendance and women are part of the requirement. I am suggesting that based on our research in Oriente, women have an indispensable role and power within this Cuban religion, despite the fact that others suggest differently.18 Animal sacrifice is an intimate part of religious practice in Palo. After such a rite, women are responsible for properly dressing appropriate ceremonial animals in order for them to be cooked for a ritual meal with participants of the event. Women also assist in preparing other ritual foods during and after rites, ceremonies, and religious celebrations. These food preparations are intricate and require an abundance of sacred knowledge. However, this does not automatically suggest gendered responsibilities for food and food preparation. A strict gendered division of labor does not adequately represent Palo practices about food. For example, it is common to see men dressing ceremonial animals after a sacrifice, particularly the larger goats or pigs, and on more than one occasion, men were responsible for preparing the communal meal associated with a sacred event. Indeed, a male taught a member of our research team to properly season ceremonial meat, including the goat.19 General and ritual cleaning of Palo sacred spaces is another activity wherein gender fluidity can be seen and proposes that women are anything but powerless initiates in the religion. During some rituals and after most, the floor where sacred objects have been assembled becomes exceptionally cluttered with a variety of items: leaves, sticks, dirt, water, blood, and other substances. This is above all true after multiple sacrifices. Not only must these be removed when a ritual is complete, but often the floor must be cleaned before the remainder of spiritual work can continue. Men typically perform these cleaning tasks, but it is also common to observe women on their knees gathering the leaves, dirt, sticks, and liquids with their hands. And in reality, it is normal to see women and men together cleaning the ritual residues.

CUBAN VODU´ The practice of Cuban Vodu´ in Oriente contains the characteristic Dahomean-type pantheonic loa lineages, or lines of divine spirit forces. The loa are the primary spirits venerated by Haitian as well as Oriente practitioners of the religious traditions. Cuban Haitian loa are a reblending of African Fon-Ewe/Adja continental knowledge with cultural contacts, in St. Domingue where they became Haitian, and with cultural contacts in Cuba, particularly in Oriente where they became Cuban. In both locations,

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loa lineages are Rada and Petro. The art historian, Robert Farris Thompson, does a fine job of describing the presence of these sacred forces in the Americas. He gives details of the loa as: Rada, [named] after the slaving designation for persons abducted from Arada, on the coast of Dahomey, itself derived from the name of the holy city of the Dahomeans, Allada; and the other called Petro-Lemba, or simply Petro, after a messianic figure, Don Pedro, from the south peninsula of what is now Haiti and the northern Kongo trading and healing society, Lemba.20

Beyond and above each of the Rada and Petro divine spirit lines is the Bon Dieu or Grand Met, the Supreme Creator power. Damballa is the lead spirit within the Rada class of loa and it is represented as a serpent. Reverence of Damballa is absolutely fundamental to the practice of Vodu´ in Oriente. Rada loa are exceptionally powerful. They are responsible for and have dominion over the soul, the sky, the earth, the seas, and the Universe. These loa only perform good works and, as strong as they are, their power is limited. Erzulie is a Rada loa with great numbers of Vodu´ devotees, and she is tremendously powerful and well loved by them. The triumvirate or group of three spirits that lead the Petro class of loa are Baron Samedi, Baron Cimetiere, and Baron Crois, and they are even stronger than Rada. Petro loa are ancestors whose bodies have departed from the human historical world. They are spirits of the dead who have moved beyond phenomena of humans’ material time and beyond the time of the living dead. Petro spirits are able to intervene in Rada activities on behalf of human beings who serve the Petro loa through ritual practices. The linkage between ritual and blood family Vodu´ relations is an important foundation to the religion as practiced in Oriente. As in colonial years of practice, contemporary Vodu´ groups were aligned and include all family members allied within the community of a female and/or male leader, called Mambo and Houngan, respectively. The internal linkage begins with religious leaders who marry and have children, who also marry and have children, who also marry and have children, and so on. All of these blood relations are family members but those who are joined into the family by religious initiation expand the numbers. The entire genealogical relations of the Mambo and/or Houngan consist of blood and ritualistically bonded members. The total of these linkages to the leader(s) constitutes a Vodu´ worship family. We worked with one Vodu´ community in Las Tunas, Cuba, where male members represented four generations of practitioners and all were blood relatives to the female leader. Throughout our research, we found that there

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was a genealogical spiritual relationship to Vodu´ leaders, no matter how far removed the individual might be from direct blood lineage. In Oriente, this relational pattern appears to be normal and was further confirmed when we interviewed family descendants of two prominent Cuban military leaders. Family offspring of military brothers Antonio and Jose´ Maceo Grajales continue to reside in Oriente. Antonio Maceo Grajales was the African descendant solider who fought in the 1868 Ten Years War and the 1895 War for Independence. He rose to the rank of general and is a popular and internationally known military Cuban leader. Jose´ Maceo Grajales was the younger brother of Antonio who also fought in the independence struggle, although his reputation is more localized to Cuba. Our research team was in contact with the great-grand and grand relatives to the Maceo brothers and each respondent independently reported that their family ancestors had intimate knowledge of Vodu´ customs, if they were not actual practitioners. One descendant reported that, ‘‘I learned how to do the [spiritual] work from my grandmother and her grandmother taught her.’’ This respondent did not personally know the grandmother of his grandmother but that relative minimally would have been a great-grand relative to the Maceo Grajales military men. This genealogical linkage also would have included Mariana Grajales, the mother of the Maceo brothers. Mariana had 10–12 children and is known to have socialized all of them to fight for Cuban independence. She also is credited with joining the struggle and employing mountain herbs to tend the many wounds of her sons and other insurgents. Descendants of this heroic woman acknowledged to our research team that contemporary members in their immediate families are Vodu´ practitioners. We were not able to attend a ceremony of these relatives but the practitioners did confirm their religious adherence.21 For most, Oriente Vodu´ possesses major belief practices that incorporate a devotion to the family of loa associated with warrior spirits. This emphasis is consistent with African Dahomean and Haitian military legends that integrate historical events and religious practices. The Ogu´n spirit force that is consistently pictured in Vodu´ sacred spaces of Oriente presents this warrior spirit in Haitian expression. Often he is a ceramic figurine, a warrior astride a horse in motion on the battlefield.22 Legba is another such warrior spirit who is significantly popular in Oriente. Another important component in Oriente Vodu´ is the ritual practice of human and spirit interaction. In accordance with the religion’s comprehension, Vodu´ loa visit with practitioners and habitually borrow human bodies to communicate with them. Women are major recipients of such visits by spirits, and Vodu´ devotees, called serviteurs, understand that the most basic access to the supernatural otherworld occurs through the act of a spirit

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entering or mounting their body. Often this is called possession but that term is not positioned within the world view or cosmic orientation of practitioners. Neither is the term derived from knowledge foundations of their historical heritage. Oriente serviteurs understand that as a spirit accompanies the human body, the person is able to enter a temporary state of exaltation and their consciousness moves into the time and space of the spiritual otherworld. This profound and historically honored visitation process is made possible through performed ritual activities wherein women are significant, if not majority, participants. Women serviteurs report that as a spirit enters their bodies, they experience an extraordinary force moving into/onto their being. From the perspective of our observations, ‘‘being mounted’’ by the/a spirit evokes a trance-like state of awareness. Serviteurs understand that divine spirits of the supernatural world must own the body, even temporarily, if humans are to participate in spirit interaction and acquire knowledge that can aidhuman life. The women surrender their bodies in service to divine spirits; they give individual will and body to become a vessel for use by the loa. It is the best, if not the highest, type of spiritual submission.23 At the same time, Vodu´ in Oriente is a lifestyle that encompasses everything that concerns practitioners and, like most Cuban religions, it is part of all aspects of living existence. The separation of sacred and secular components of life is understood as a false partition, as a line of difference that is hard to determine.

ESPIRITISMO This distinct or indigenously Cuban religious complex is proclaimed to have the widest variety and the largest number of practicing communities in Oriente—the contemporary provinces of Guanta´namo, Santiago, Holguı´n, Las Tunes, and Granma. Espiritismo has at least four distinct pathways within the larger religious complex. Each pathway is a whole system and each reflects contact and exchange between ideas of French European-influenced Spiritism, ideas of U.S.-influenced Spiritualism, and the established ritual ideas of Oriente’s multicultural population. For more than three centuries, Oriente inhabitants lived as a region that relied upon its own internal resources even though the inhabitants were part of the island as a Spanish colony. No matter their preference in religious practice, their comprehensions about the Universe—their world views or cosmic orientations—were deeply influenced by ideas imported to the region by ifteenth-, sixteenth-, and seventeenth-century Africans. This was even true of local colonial Catholic customs that guided European descendants’ practices. There were similarities and overlaps with African descendants’

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spiritual appreciations about the cosmos.24 For example, both the world views—cosmic orientations—of colonial European Catholics and Africans contained a pantheonic approach to otherworld beings; the two cultural communities understood ordered groups of spirits. Spiritism and Spiritualism arrived in colonial Oriente in the middle of the nineteenth century and emphasized the communication with spirits. This was a commonality with existing attitudes of the eastern region and served as a means through which the newly imported ideas joined with African-based heritage cultural streams found in Oriente. Regional inhabitants combined the mixture of practices to produce new ritual behaviors.25 The various combinations of the mixture evolved to become varieties of an innovative Cuban religious tradition, Espiritismo. At the same time of these creative processes, Oriente inhabitants were the initiating participants in Cuba’s first independence struggle against Spanish colonialism, and many regional rebels were attracted to the new religious practices because they were not related to Spanish or Catholic colonialism and they had compatibility with existing perspectives. Anticolonial and fully nationalistic attitudes immediately became associated with the new religious customs, and there is no doubt that women were part of the independence movement in Cuba. The mother of the military leader Antonio Maceo Grajales, Mariana Grajales, is known to have insisted that all of her children—males and females—fight in the struggles.26 Each of the four Espiritismo pathways that evolved in the nineteenth century contains rich, dynamic, and well-articulated customs that are linked, and sometimes overlap in how and what they do. Present-day women are well-known leaders in each of the Espiritismo traditions and are the majority number of practitioners in most. Basic parameters for this popular religion can be summarized as follows:

Espiritismo Cruzado Cruzado appears in many forms because it was born in the island’s multicultural and multireligious environment. Its practices are typically filled with components rebuilt from other Cuban religions in combination with Cuban folk Catholicism.

Espiritismo de Cordon This variety of Espiritismo is set apart by the richness of the dance and songs that accompany its central ritual. With leadership from spiritual mediums, practitioners carry out spiritual work by forming a cordon— human chain or cord. The cordon ritual is prevalent in Oriente but rarely found in Cuba’s western or middle regions.

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Espiritismo de Mesa o Cientifico Followers of this Espiritismo identify their practice as science, not religion. Their central ritual consists of believers sitting around a mesa—table— and entering a state of trance after making invocations that establish communication with spiritual forces. Despite this activity, followers do not consider themselves ritualistic.

Espiritismo de Caridad Espiritismo de Caridad places most of the emphasis of its spiritual work on the practice of despojo27—charitable gifts and santiguacion—sacred pilgrimages. Practitioners strongly contend that by so doing they garner spiritual benefits to themselves and/or to others in need.

Like the reglas conga, the four sets of practice pathways of Espiritismo are distinct, and as I selected one regla conga, Palo Monte/Mayombe, I will do likewise and only review Cordon of the Espiritismo religious complex. Espiritismo de Cordon is an exceptional set of practices in the spectrum of Cuba’s indigenous religions. It epitomizes the rise of the Espiritismo complex that became extremely popular in Oriente in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The popularity was due in part to practitioners’ strong association with Cuba’s independence struggles and the fact that Cordon’s ritual characteristics incorporate this sense of national identity. Communication with spirits is one such characteristic, and the Cuban historian Joel James reviewed events of the 1895 War of Independence and identified ritual behaviors that became significant to Cordon rituals. James located documents about events within those struggles and uncovered reports of soldiers from various social classes. James reported that a common ritual practice of the rebels reflected the unifying role played by an emerging Espiritismo de Cordon. When Cuban rebels were particularly insecure and frustrated about events of their military campaign, black and white combatants would celebrate the cordon or cord ritual to help drive away the emotional stresses and reconnect them to their nationalistic goal. The ritual was familiar to Oriente Cubans of African and European descent and was led by those of Kongo ethnic backgrounds. Black and white soldiers held hands and formed the human cord that invoked spirits near and far. They moved counter-clockwise and together; everyone petitioned spirits for guidance and success and asked for the safety of their families and friends. Our research team agrees with Joel Jamess’ proposition that the common struggle for independence and the use of distinct Oriente practices in collective rituals permitted Espiritismo de Cordon to become a uniquely Cuban creation.28

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Member practitioners of Espiritismo de Cordon are called cordoneros and the expressed intent of their religion is to reconcile lives of the living through contact and work with spirits of those whose bodies have passed beyond the world of the living. The fundamental purpose of this spiritual work is to cure diseases, particularly mental illness, but it is also believed that the work can solve other human difficulties—issues of love, economics, employment, finance, and housing. Problems are resolved through contacting spiritual currents, commissions of spirits, or specific spirits. Spirits respond to humans’ contact by using the current to accomplish their visitation. Cordon believers understand that a commission is many spirits joined together, thereby creating a stronger spiritual instrument, and they too arrive via a current. The contact with a commission, or even a spirit, is achieved by a trained individual transcending the historical space of humans to be in touch with the otherworld of spirits. The transcendence is accomplished through humans achieving an altered state of being or trance, and the spiritual work is toward that goal. Generally, this must be done in a collective format, by holding hands in a line that resembles a cord. We observed women as the majority of participants in this ritual activity. Each instance of the cordon ritual in which our research team took part was always focused on specific conditions that participants presented as needing and/or wanting to be healed. Cordoneros do not avoid other religious or nonreligious curative forms; they merely comprehend that their spiritual work must occupy their attention in the healing processes. Many of the female cordoneras we spoke with recounted a variety of ailments in need of healing that had been brought to their attention. Adherents also acknowledged that after working with the cordon ritual, many of their members were experiencing more healthy lifestyles. They said these persons were unable to be helped by modern medical authorities. The cordon ritual begins with a preparatory or invocational phase of reading from the book Chosen Prayers29 by Allan Kardec, which consists of prayers of ‘‘love to the Celestial ‘Father.’ ’’ This book is discussed as a sacred text for the religion, and women often lead in reading from it, just as they are major, if not majority, participants in the cordon ritual. After prayers, the book is closed in a slow, systematic, and ritualistic fashion that cordoneros say communicates great reverence. All worshipers now understand that spiritual communication has been established and the Celestial Father has granted consent to form the cordon or cord. The cordon work is central to this Espiritismo and actually begins when leaders, in communication with the spirits, stand and hold hands with each other, and others in the space do likewise. This forms a horseshoe configuration that is opened at a table, which is the focal site in the space.

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The principal leader and guide begins to chant, to call forth spirits to join the membership in the work. Members respond to the chant with a rhythmic chorus, repeated over and over. At the end of each refrain, but before repeating it and without unclasping their hands, members make guttural sounds that punctuate the chanting rhythm. Together, they move their arms, first up into the air, then down toward the floor. Their feet slide in unison in a counter-clockwise direction, first one foot, then the next. A vigorous foot stomp completes each sideways slide. Often the guide(s) will interrupt the cordon obreros—cord workers—on the downward movement and instruct them to slightly touch the floor with their joined hands. On the next upward motion, participants are instructed to separate their hands and elevate them to heaven in a ‘‘self-blessing’’ gesture. Occasionally the principal leader will ask all others of similar authority positions to concentrate their thoughts ‘‘in’’ God. This usually indicates that work of the cordon is not going well or is not strong enough and members’ concentration must precede additional rounds of the sliding and chanting. It is normal that at least one person comes to a cordon work session seeking healing and/or that the membership does ‘‘spiritual charity’’ for the/ a petitioner. At a designated time in the ritual, therefore, such persons are led to face the central focal table, and the membership centers attention of its work on bringing out an ‘‘anointing of spiritual well-being’’ for all persons present, but particularly for the seekers. During the process, spirits will come to some mediums and/or members. In the altered state of consciousness, these persons receive knowledge from the otherworld that is interpreted and shared with everyone present, including those seeking charity. The ‘‘deliverance’’ phase of the entire cordon service is its conclusion. Mediums proceed around the inside of the cord configuration and separate practitioners’ joined hands. With hands separated, they lean forward and slightly touch the floor with the tips of their fingers and turn themselves, counter-clockwise, in personal circles. They then raise their hands above their heads and shake them upward. This last act is executed as the deliverance, and mediums instruct all participants to ‘‘unfold’’ in the same fashion to deliver themselves. Then there are closing chants and a special song, giving thanks to God and the spirits who have allowed the session to be successful. The cordon work is now concluded. Women are such a numerical presence during a cordon ritual that the tone of the chanting and singing is of a soprano range, and only the guttural moan approaches a lower register toward baritone.

CONCLUSION Based on this review of four distinctly Cuban religions, women are in no way absent as practitioners or as leaders. Of course, we need further research

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that gives more focus on the details of women’s participation and the relative strength of the roles they play in each tradition. We also need more evidence on different roles women perform and how women’s participation affects each religion. Unfortunately, this type of in-depth research has yet to be done for distinct Cuban religions, in general, for such practices in Oriente, specifically, or for women’s participation within these sacred expressions. If nothing else, this is one conclusion to be made from basics of this presentation; we need more and stronger information about women and Cuban religions. At the same time, it should be clear that women are everywhere within the performance of ritual activities associated with Cuba’s distinct religious practices. They are leaders within their chosen practices, though the extent of their leadership depends on the religion. They also are the majority of members in each of the four traditions considered by this chapter. However, Muerte´ra Bembe´ de Sao is yet to be understood as a separate and cohesive set of religious behaviors associated with colonial African descendants of Cuba. This means that we need additional worship communities in order to say what women’s normal role is in the tradition and with which to evaluate their participation. However, there is a woman who leads one community in Santiago de Cuba whose reputation has spread throughout the consciousness of practitioners in that city, Muerte´ra practitioners and others. Women also hold positions of power in Palo Monte/Mayombe and are indispensible to some activities of this tradition. Although our research team did not encounter women as visible public leaders in Palo, they do hold positions of power. Within the practice of Vodu´, on the other hand, women are strong, public, and visible leaders of worshiping communities. In all four of the selected religious traditions, women were the majority number of the general membership, though this chapter in no way represents a full or in-depth study of Oriente women, not even in the selected traditions. A perceived strength of this chapter is that it offers a fuller exploration of the historical context through which Cuban religions came to their contemporary expression. This chapter also provides basic understandings about some beliefs and practices of the religious traditions and gives focus to women. To do this, I selected four popular Cuban religions and reviewed them as they are practiced in Oriente. I hope this chapter has accomplished its goals, and I invite readers to continue their study.

NOTES 1. http://www.aneki.com/caribbean.html; http://www.worldatlas.com/ webimage/countrys/na.htm. 2. Louis A. Pe´rez Jr., Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution Second Edition (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 14–18; Jalil Sued-Badillo,

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‘‘The Indigenous Societies at the Time of Conquest,’’ in General History of the Caribbean, Volume I: Autochthonous Societies, ed. Jalil Sued-Badillo (London: McMillan, 2003), 259–91. 3. George Reid Andrews, Afro-Latin America, 1800–2000(New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 17; Hugh Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), 21–22, 1511. 4. Colin A. Palmer, ‘‘The Slave Trade, African Slavers and the Demography of the Caribbean to 1750,’’ inGeneral History of the Caribbean, Volume III: The Slave Societies of the Caribbean, ed. Franklin W. Knight (Hong Kong: UNESCO Publishing, 1997), 13. 5. Thomas, Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom,1511; Mary Turner, ‘‘Religious Beliefs,’’ in General History of the Caribbean, Volume III, 287–321; Gwendolyn Midlo Hall, Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2005), 42–45 and chapter 3, where she fully discusses the ‘‘Clustering of African Ethnicities in the Americas.’’ 6. Marı´a Elena Dı´az, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670–1780 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000), 9. 7. Hubert Aimes, A History of Slavery in Cuba 1511 to 1868 (New York: Octagon Books, 1967). 8. Diego Bosch Ferrer and Jose Sa´nhez Guerra, Rebeldı´a y Apalencamiento jurisdiccioned de Guanta´namo y Baracoa (Guanta´namo: Centro Provincial de Patrimonio Cultural, 2003); Creme´ Ramos and Duharte Jime´nez, Barracones en Los Cafetales (Habana: Editado e impreso por Publicgraf, 1994); and Jose´ Luciano Franco, Los Palenques de los negros Cimarrones (Habana: Comisio´n de Activistas de Hisoria, 1973). 9. Bosch Ferrer and Guerra, Rebeldı´a y Apalencamiento jurisdiccioned de Guanta´namo y Baracoa. 10. Personal interview with Prof. Jose´ Millet of Casa del Caribe, Santiago de Cuba, July 2005. 11. Chant shared with AART during field research 2006, 2007, 2008. 12. Dı´az, The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre; Jualynne Dodson, ‘‘Saced Spaces and Religious Traditions,’’ in Maria Elena Diaz, Oriente Cuba (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008). 13. Joel James, Cuba 1900–1928: La republica dividida contra si misma (Habana: Editorial Arte Y Literatura, 1974); also see Diego Bosch Ferrer and Jose Sanhez Guerra, Rebeldıa y Apalencamiento jurisdiccioned de Guantanamo y Baracoa (Guantanamo: Centro Provincial de Patrimonio Cultural, 2003). 14. See Linda M. Heywood and John K. Thornton, Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007); Wyatt MacGaffey, Kongo Political Culture: The Conceptual Challenge of the Particular (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000);

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John K.Thornton, The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonia Movement, 1684–1706 (Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1998). 15. Armin Schwegler, ‘‘Short Note: On the (Sensational) Survival of KiKongo in Twentieth-Century Cuba’’ from El vocabulario (ritual) bantu´ de Cuba. Parte I: Acerca de 1 matriz Africana de la ‘‘lengua congo’’ in ‘‘El Monte y Vocabulario Congode Lydia Cabrera,’’ Ame´rica Negra 15 (1998): 137–185. 16. David H. Brown, Santerı´a Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003); Shanti Ali Zaid, ‘‘Life in the Land of the Dead: Reynerio Pe´rez, Vincente Portuondo Martin, and Twentieth Century Religious Practice in Santiago de Cuba.’’ Unpublished honor’s thesis, East Lansing, Michigan, History Department, 2007. 17. Lecture with Jesus Robiana, Director, Instituto de anthopolgia de Cuba, Havana, Cuba, 2006. In 2008, our research team also visited the bronze monument dedicated to Carlota and the Matanzas rebellion. 18. Personal interviews with Louis Fran Figueredo, Santiago de Cuba, July 2004. 19. Personal field observations, 2005. Also see Sonya Maria Johnson, ‘‘Unpublished Field Research Journal: Cuba July 1–August 1,’’ East Lansing, MI: African Atlantic Research Team, 2004. 20. Robert Farris Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy (New York: Vintage Books, 1993), 64. 21. Jualynne Dodson, ‘‘Unpublished Field Notes Journal: Oriente,’’, East Lansing, MI: African Atlantic Research Team, 2005; Jualynne Dodson, ‘‘Unpublished Field Notes Journal: Oriente,’’ East Lansing, MI: African Atlantic Research Team, 2006. Our team conducted no fewer than four interviews with different Maceo family members from two older generations. Each person confirmed that the family had practitioners of Cuban religions, specifically the grandmother of the military Maceo brothers. The interview respondents also confirmed that the rituals were definitely of Haitian origin. These family members said that there also were practitioners of Palo Mayombe within their family. We continue to probe this issue. 22. Thompson, Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy, 169. 23. Joan Dayan, Haiti, History, and the Gods (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995). 24. This idea is held by George Brandon, Dead Sell Memories: Santeria from Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993), as well as by Sidney Mintz and and Richard Price, The Birth of African American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective (Boston: Beacon Press, 1976).

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25. See Brandon, Dead Sell Memories; Joel James, Sobre muertos y dioses (Habana: Ediciones Caseron, 1989), as well as Mintz and Price, The Birth of African American Culture. 26. Jean Stubbs, ‘‘Social and Political Motherhood of Cuba: Mariana Grajales Cuello,’’ in Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, eds., Verene Shepherd, Bridget Breneton, and Barbara Bailey (Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publisher, 1995), 1915. 27. Our team is familiar with the use of this term to describe ritual cleansing or purification. Such usage is not incompatible with the Espiritismo understanding of doing charitable acts. 28. James, Sobre muertos y dioses. 29. Allan Kardec, Experimental Spiritism. Book on Mediums; or, Guide for Mediums and Invotators, trans. Emma A. Wood (York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser,, 1994).

BIBLIOGRAPHY Aimes, Hubert. A History of Slavery in Cuba 1511 to 1868. New York: Octagon Books, 1967 [1907]. Andrews, George Reid. Afro-Latin America 1800–2000. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Bettelheim, Judith, ed. Cuban Festivals: A Century of Afro-Cuban Culture, Second Edition Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publishers, 2001. Brandon, George. Dead Sell Memories: Santeria from Africa to the New World: The Dead Sell Memories. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Brown, David H. Santerı´a Enthroned: Art, Ritual, and Innovation in an Afro-Cuban Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. Brown, Karen McCarthy. Mama Lola: A Vodou Priestess in Brooklyn. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991. Central Intelligence Agency. The World Factbook: Cuba, 2005. Available at http://www.cia.gov/librarypublications/the-world-factbook/index.html. Dayan, Joan. Haiti, History, and the Gods. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995. De Groot, Silvia W., Catherine A. Christen, and Franklin W. Knight. ‘‘Maroon Communities in the Circum-Caribbean.’’ In General History of the Caribbean, Volume III: The Slave Societies of the Caribbean, edited by Franklin Knight, 169–93. Hong Kong: UNESCO Publishing, 1997. Dı´az, Marı´a Elena. The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670–1780. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000.

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Dodson, Jualynne E. ‘‘Drum, Rhythm, Music: Worship Requirements of Cuban Religious Traditions.’’ Paper presented at Caribbean Soundscapes: A Conference on Caribbean Music and Culture, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, March 12–14, 2004. . ‘‘Unpublished Field Notes Journal: Oriente.’’ East Lansing, MI: African Atlantic Research Team, 2005. . ‘‘Unpublished Field Notes Journal: Oriente.’’ East Lansing, MI: African Atlantic Research Team, 2006. . ‘‘Saced Spaces and Religious Traditions.’’ In Maria Elena Diaz Oriente Cuba. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2008. Ferrer, Diego Bosch, and Jose Sa´nhez Guerra. Rebeldı´a y Apalencamiento jurisdiccioned de Guanta´namo y Baracoa. Guanta´namo: Centro Provincial de Patrimonio Cultural, 2003. Franco, Jose´ Luciano. Los Palenques de los negros Cimarrones. Habana: Comisio´n de Activistas de Hisoria, 1973. Hall, Gwendolyn Midlo. Slavery and African Ethnicities in the Americas: Restoring the Links. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina, 2005. Heywood, Linda M., and John K. Thornton. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. James, Joel. Cuba 1900–1928: La republica dividida contra si misma. Habana: Editorial Arte Y Literatura, 1974. . Sobre muertos y dioses. Habana: Ediciones Caseron, 1989. Johnson, Sonya Maria. ‘‘Unpublished Field Research Journal: Cuba July 1– August 1.’’ East Lansing, MI: African Atlantic Research Team, 2004. Kardec, Allan. Spiritualist Philosophy, The Spirit Book. New York: Arno Press, 1976 [1875]. . Experimental Spiritism. Book on Mediums; or, Guide for Mediums and Invotators, translated by Emma A. Wood. York Beach, Maine: Samuel Weiser, 1994 [1874]. Knight, Franklin W., ed.General History of the Caribbean, Volume III: The Slave Societies of the Caribbean. Hong Kong: UNESCO Publishing, 1997. MacGaffey, Wyatt. Kongo Political Culture: The Conceptual Challenge of the Particular. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2000. Matibag, Eugenio. Afro-Cuban Religious Experience: Cultural Reflections in Narrative. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996. Metraux, Alfred. Voodoo in Haiti. New York: Schoken Books, 1972. Mintz, Sidney W., and Richard Price. The Birth of African American Culture: An Anthropological Perspective. Boston: Beacon Press, 1976. O’Kelly, James. The Mambi-Land or Adventures of a Herald Correspondent in Cuba. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott, 1874.

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Palmer, Colin A. ‘‘The Slave Trade, African Slavers and the Demography of the Caribbean to 1750.’’ In General History of the , Volume III: The Slave Societies of the Caribbean, edited by Franklin W. Knight, 9–44. Hong Kong: UNESCO Publishing, 1997. Pe´rez, Louis A., Jr. Cuba: Between Reform and Revolution Second Edition. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995. Pe´rez De La Riva, Francisco. ‘‘Cuban Palenques.’’ In Maroon Societies Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas, edited by Richard Price, 49–59. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1996. Ramos, Zoe Creme´, and Rafael Duharte Jime´nez. Barracones en Los Cafetales. Habana: Editado e impreso por Publicgraf, 1994. Schwegler, Armin. ‘‘Short Note: On the (Sensational) Survival of KiKongo in Twentieth-Century Cuba’’ from El vocabulario (ritual) bantu´ de Cuba. Parte I: Acerca de 1 matriz Africana de la ‘‘lengua congo,’’ in El Monte y Vocabulario Congo de Lydia Cabrera. Ame´rica Negra 15 (1998): 137–185. Stubbs, Jean. ‘‘Social and Political Motherhood of Cuba: Mariana Grajales Cuello.’’ In Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, edited by Verene Shepherd, Bridget Breneton, and Barbara Bailey, 296–317. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publisher, 1995. Sued-Badillo, Jalil. ‘‘The Indigenous Societies at the Time of Conquest.’’ InGeneral History of the Caribbean, Volume I: Autochthonous Societies, edited by Jalil Sued-Badillo, 259–91. London: McMillan, 2003. Thomas, Hugh. Cuba: The Pursuit of Freedom. New York: Harper & Row, 1971. . The Slave Trade: The Story of the Atlantic Slave Trade: 1440–1870. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1997. Thompson, Robert Farris. Flash of the Spirit: African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. New York: Vintage Books, 1983. Thornton, John. The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonia Movement, 1684–1706. Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1998. Turner, Mary. ‘‘Religious Beliefs.’’ In General History of Caribbean, Volume III: The Slave Societies of the Caribbean, edited by Franklin Knight, 287–321. Hong Kong: UNESCO Publishing, 1997. Zaid, Shanti Ali. ‘‘Life in the Land of the Dead: Reynerio Pe´rez, Vincente Portuondo Martin, and Twentieth Century Religious Practice in Santiago de Cuba.’’ Unpublished honor’s thesis, East Lansing, MI: History Department, 2007.

CHAPTER

9

Religion and Women’s Sexuality in Africa: The Intersection of Power and Vulnerability Oyeronke Olademo

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oruba culture and tradition is based on oral literature. Deductions from Yoruba oral literature supports the people’s belief in binary and complementary categorizations as well as the need to maintain balance in all circumstances. These beliefs run across the people’s perception of nature, human relations, and understanding of supernatural forces. Binary categorization is a prevalent characteristic of the Yoruba thought system. The Yoruba divide the Universe into two: the heavenly and earthly abodes. Each is conceived as representing half of a bowl, hence, though separate, they are interconnected. This perception is reflected in the genres of Yoruba oral literature and is cited on different occasions. Some sayings among the Yoruba that reflect their convictions follow. ‘‘Aye l’oja, orun n’ile,’’ means ‘‘the Earth is the market while Heaven is home.’’ The Yoruba believe that the earthly abode is a market, life is a journey to and in the market, but the heavenly abode is home. ‘‘Otooto l’ayanmo, a de ile aye tan l’oju n kan gbogbo wa’’ means ‘‘we each choose a different destiny (in Heaven) but become impatient when we get to Earth,’’ buttressing the people’s opinion that each person is on Earth to actualize an earlier chosen destiny in Heaven. ‘‘Aye ni iro mo, orun o gbeke’’ means ‘‘lies (deceit) are limited to the Earth, there is no room for such in

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Heaven,’’ which confirms that Heaven is for good with no room for lies or evil. ‘‘Oku olomo ki i sun’’ means ‘‘a dead parent does not sleep (stays awake to care for the children).’’ In all of these sayings, it comes to the fore that the Yoruba perceive a strong connection between Earth and Heaven. Further, this interconnection is exemplified in ancestral worship among the Yoruba. Ancestral worship is underscored by the conviction that the dead remain relevant and functional members of the family, with enhanced abilities due to their dead status. Masquerades are often considered as representatives of the dead with blessings for the living on specific visitation periods. Hence, for the Yoruba, the visible is a reflection of the invisible. Other concepts that reflect Yoruba binary categorizations are soul/body, good/bad, and male/female. Each of these groups is interdependent and interconnected, which often necessitates the need for diplomacy and accommodation. Yoruba binary categorization is rooted in holistic harmony that promotes the maintenance of balance. The imperative to always strike a balance and maintain a balance is rooted in Yoruba cosmological myths. Whereas some other cultures may view binary categorization as being oppositional, the Yoruba perceive it as being complementary. Yoruba binary categorization encompasses the assurance that an individual will not have it all good in life but will have a mixture of good and bad experiences; hence the people say ‘‘ti ibi ti ire la da ile aye’’ (meaning ‘‘this Earth was created for good and evil’’). The Yoruba often link this stance to the presence of the ‘‘ekeji omo’’ (meaning ‘‘placenta’’ at the birth of a new child). In Yoruba parlance, therefore, whereas the baby delivered is good, the placenta is evil, and right from birth onward, the child is expected to have both good and bad experiences in life until death. In addition, Yoruba gender construct is a manifestation of the people’s binary categorization, and this is not exclusive to humans. This is because assigned roles for females and males in the Yoruba world view include nonhuman elements of nature. The paradigm for this categorization is derived principally from Yoruba cosmological myth that enjoins gender complementarity. Females—humans and nonhumans—are construed as possessing the ability to soften, cool, and enliven any situation that is harsh or aggressive. Males are perceived as representing toughness, aggressiveness, and hotness. A combination of both parties is needed to strike a balance, and this is the Yoruba agenda for gender relations. A thorough appreciation of the Yoruba world view is imperative to understanding the people’s gender construct. Yoruba gender construction does not translate into oppression and domination of one gender by the other, rather, each gender has areas of specialization and jurisdiction, which may include occupation, ritual performance, or biological functions. These classifications are, however, not rigid, but fluid and negotiable as dictated by contingencies of prevailing circumstances.

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The Yoruba notion of interdependency ensures that there is no room for absolutism in any quarter. The male principle needs the female principle to function well just as the female needs the male for meaningful human relations. This is clearly reflected in the Yoruba governance system, which includes visible and invisible notions of power; neither of which is less potent. An indication of this could be discerned from the political and religious realms of the Yoruba, both of which are interdependent. Whereas mostly men occupy the public offices of governance in traditional Yoruba communities, women control the base of the community’s power structure. Cases of female rulers may be cited in Yorubaland but a large number of Yoruba obas are males. If this observation is taken on the surface, it could suggest that men possess all the power and that Yoruba women are powerless. However, this is far from the case, as the Yoruba would say ‘‘obinrin l’agba, okunrin l’ada’’ (meaning ‘‘woman is the greatest, the man is the strongest’’). The concept of ijuba shows that the Yoruba woman/female principle is not docile. At the beginning of any endeavor among the Yoruba, ijuba, i.e,. homage, is mandatory. Whether at a family meeting, a wedding, a burial ceremony, a political meeting, or a religious gathering, homage must be paid to the Iya Mi in Yorubaland. Usually this involves the pouring of libation and incantatory citations. The Iya Mi is the council of elderly women (sometimes referred to as witches) who wield tremendous powers in all sectors of Yoruba living experiences. The powers of the Iya Mi are derived from Olodumare (God), and the base of power and authority in any Yoruba community resides with them. This potent power of the Iya Mi is essentially invisible. Consequently, the visible powers of rulers in Yorubaland depend on the invisible powers of the Iya Mi. There is interdependency between the visible and the invisible in the Yoruba political realm. The same is true of the religious sector, which manifests this interdependency at multifarious levels. First, the survival and relevance of the deities are closely linked with the worship and offerings given by the devotees. In other words, a deity whom the devotees construe as being unsupportive would be neglected and worship denied. This is recorded in the Yoruba saying, ‘‘orisa bo o le gbe mi, se mi bo o se ba mi’’ (meaning ‘‘orisha, if you cannot better my lot, at least don’t worsen it’’). Eventually, the likelihood is high that such a deity would go into oblivion. Second, for a deity to remain relevant in the Yoruba religious setting, constant worship and offerings are required. This explains why devotees who neglect worship to some deities are often advised to go and remedy the situation through prescribed sacrifices. There is a strong belief that neglect in offering sacrifice to deities could cause negative developments. Third, human actions are perceived as bearing a link to an earlier chosen lot in the heavenly abode. Hence the Yoruba say, ‘‘ayanmo o gboogun, ori lelejo’’ (meaning ‘‘that which is chosen in the heavenly abode cannot be altered with medicine; it is ori that we should

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placate’’). The belief is that we have already chosen our destiny before embarking on the journey to Earth. Consequently, a poor person is not poor because he/she is lazy, uneducated or dull academically, but primarily because such an individual had chosen to be poor in the heavenly abode before being born on Earth. To this end, the Yoruba say, ‘‘kirakita o d’ola, ka sise bi eru o da nnkan’’ (meaning ‘‘excessive activities do not lead to wealth, to work like a slave amounts to nothing’’). Happenings on Earth are dependent on choices made before arriving on Earth, just as human conducts on Earth inform the status of individuals when they die and transition to the hereafter. The Yoruba insistence on maintaining balance is the very ground on which complementary gender relations rest. This need cuts across every facet of the people’s social reality and is often enforced by the practice of checks and balances. No single individual or institution is accorded absolute powers, but every authority or power structure is checked by others either through binary relationship or interdependency. In governance, for instance, the ruler is assisted by a council of chiefs with whom decisions are reached. In the rare case of a ruler becoming a despot, it is this council that checks the excesses of the ruler and if change is not forthcoming, urges him/her to si igba wo (i.e., ‘‘open the calabash’’ or commit suicide). Balance is often sought between female and male principles in both natural and ritual settings. The goal is to effect balance through the coolness and softness of femaleness impacting the toughness and hotness of maleness in the polity. One joint venture of the female and male is that of procreation through sex. African sexuality is geared towards one goal—procreation—to achieve continuity of the human race. Marriage is the prescribed setting for the exercise of human sexuality among Africans, though certain situations may necessitate other measures such as concubinage. A person’s need to get a concubine may hinge on different factors, ranging between social status and sexual satisfaction. Often times both partners in the relationship are married, which explains the secrecy attached to the affair. Worthy of mention, however, is that there are cultures in which having a concubine is an open secret and sometimes encouraged. Marriage is a duty expected of all adult male and female members of African society. Marriage is one of the characteristics of a mature person, because to be unmarried is perceived as a feature of childhood, irrespective of the individual’s age. Marriage conveys a status of responsibility which may not be true of an unmarried person. This status at marriage manifests at different levels for the male as well as for the female. For the Yoruba woman, marriage is a pointer to her maturity because of the ability to change residence from her father’s house to that of her husband. In addition, it shows her ability to manage both social and natural resources. Marriage bestows on her the privilege to belong to the league of mothers. Marriage for the man is an indication of maturity because he now

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becomes a provider and guardian of others in the family. Consequently, depending on the level of success of the man as a husband and provider, responsibilities in the larger society may be assigned to him. Again, the status that marriage bestows on both males and females in Yorubaland transcends this life into the hereafter because on it hinges the phenomenon of the ancestors. The crucial role of the ancestors is best appreciated with the cyclic understanding of the Yoruba world view. In order words, children born to life grow into adulthood and die in old age only to be born again as babies in the same family. The implication of this is the cessation of a family lineage once children are not born into the family. Thus, marriage is a rhythm of life in which everyone must participate: the ancestors, the living, and the yet unborn. Having children is very essential in African marriages. Children are the glory of marriages and the more there are of them the greater the glory 1. The essence of having children is widely recorded in Yoruba oral genres including songs, stories, proverbs, dictums and dirges. Examples of some sayings on the importance of procreation in Yoruba oral genres follow. ‘‘Omo niyi, omo nide, omo l’aso, omo ni i wo ‘le de ni l’ojo ale’’ means ‘‘children guarantee prestige, children are as brass, children are cloths because they shield parents from shame.’’ Children take care of the house—or concerns— for parents in old age and after death. ‘‘Ina ku ‘fi eeru b’oju, ogede ku ‘fi omo re ropo, ojo a ba ku, omo eni ni wo ‘le de ni’’ means ‘‘when the fire is out, ashes replace it; when the banana tree dies, its child—young one—replaces it; when one dies, it is the children who replace one. Omo omo oosin, omo l’afe aye means ‘‘children are worthy to be revered because they constitute the essence of life.’’ Consequently, marriage and procreation are a unity among this people. To die without having children is the greatest calamity that could befall any individual among the Yoruba. A popular Yoruba song sums it up aptly, ori mi ma je npo ‘fo omo lere aye (meaning ‘‘may my destiny not let me be a loser, for children are the gains of living’’). This explains why Yoruba people, especially the females, go to any length to ensure that they produce children, because to die without children is to become disconnected, to become an outcast and to lose all links to the human race after death. To produce no children is to be erased and forgotten totally in the memories of one’s family members and community. The proper use of sex therefore is to produce children. Women bear the larger part of the task of procreation through pregnancy and childbirth; hence the Yoruba prescribe more regulations in the form of ritual observance or prohibitions (taboos) for women’s sexuality. For instance, the pregnant woman should avoid sexual relations with her husband during pregnancy and until the baby stops being breastfed, which in the past could last for two or more years. Also, the pregnant woman is not to venture

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outside in the hot sunny afternoon for fear that the child in her womb may be changed into evil spirits. Other prescriptions include restrictions against eating some food items like egg and snail. These prescriptions are to ensure the well-being of both mother and child. Sex is recognized as a gift from the creator to both men and women but its use is monitored to avoid abuse. The Yoruba do not attach any form of guilt to sexual feelings except where it is not properly utilized, such as in incestuous relationships or when it violates specific religious values like sex on bare grounds or in the afternoon. Reasons for barring sex on bare ground or in the afternoon are explained below. The woman’s sexuality is often construed in ambiguous terms among the Yoruba. Whereas her sexuality is essential to procreation and to be admired in the society,, her ability to dispense sexual favors in different circumstances is abhorred and mystified. For example, she is commended and respected as a mother, but becomes a suspect as a wife. A child’s mother is construed as the closest friend and confidante in life, and this is adequately recorded in the Yoruba genre. For example, the Yoruba say, ‘‘iya l’alabaro omo, l’ojo riri je, l’ojo airi je,’’ (meaning ‘‘the mother is the child’s confidante, either in favorable or hard situations in life’’). Moreover, any inquiries on the destiny or plight of any child from the diviner among the Yoruba requires the name of the mother, rarely that of the father. This is because though the paternity of a child may be doubted, the mother remains an undisputed source for the child. It is also worth mentioning that women’s sexuality scares men, but this fear is subsumed under condemnation for women, especially successful women. Women’s sexuality is a source of ‘‘power’’ for them among the Yoruba, biologically and mystically; but it also makes the Yoruba woman vulnerable to suspicions, manipulation, and control.

PROCREATION AS A SOURCE OF POWER The married woman among the Yoruba is greatly honored because of her sexuality and procreative abilities. Unmarried mothers were exceptions in Yorubaland, but this did not diminish respect accorded them as mothers. Even today a pregnant woman is respected and her health seen as the responsibility of the entire community. This particular position has not changed despite the influence of Western civilization in Yoruba cities. A good illustration here is a pregnant woman boarding a bus in the city when there are no vacant seats in the bus. The likelihood is very high for one or even two of the passengers to vacate their seats for her to sit down. The only qualification she has for such a caring gesture is the fact that she is expecting a baby. After giving birth to the baby, the mother continues to enjoy certain privileges. For instance, it is an abomination for any member of the community

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to delay or refuse to congratulate the new mother, no matter the kind of relationship existing between them before the birth of the baby. At birth, the mother possesses the sole privilege of ‘‘pouring’’ blood on the child, which refers to the blood lost during delivery. She is also the one who breastfeeds the child. These issues of blood and breastfeeding are sources of ‘‘power’’ to the mother for the child in Yorubaland. Both elements (i.e., blood and breast milk) bestow power on the mother, and this may be used positively (in blessing) or negatively (in cursing). Consequently, childbirth is an avenue for the empowerment of the Yoruba woman. These elements—blood and breast milk—also manifest religious significance in that blood symbolizes life; thus the mother loses a part of her to ensure the birth of the baby. In addition, her sustenance of the baby’s life continues through the breast milk which nurtures the child through infancy. This also translates into enhanced social status in the woman’s marital family and in society. In the first instance, procreation changes the social status of the woman from being a ‘‘stranger’’—just a wife—to that of being a member of the marital family. This is because her children will grow up to sustain the family lineage. Second, the Yoruba believe that motherhood creates a mystical bond signified by the great mothers (witches), known as awon Iya Mi— the great mothers. These are elderly women who are perceived as custodians of the Yoruba tradition. Narratives of their emergence are embedded in the Yoruba cosmological accounts of perspectives on women’s powers.

WITCHES (IYA MI) AMONG THE YORUBA A myth recorded in the odu ose tura of the Ifa corpus narrates how Osun was excluded by the other sixteen irunmole (primordial deities), which Olodumare sent to Earth on account of her being female. Osun reacted by gathering unto herself the women in isalaye (Earth) and formed the iya mi cult. The consequence of this was total chaos, which engulfed the whole Earth. Further explanations on this are given below. The male irunmole went back to Olodumare with a report of these adverse happenings. Olodumare inquired about the female member of the group and was told of her exclusion by the male irunmole. Olodumare advised them to go back and make peace with Osun, which they did. Thereafter, peace and normalcy returned to isalaye. The odu ose-tura points out the place of Osun among the irunmole thus: Ajuba naa-aboju-gberegede, Performed divination for Osun Sengese-Olooya-Iyun. That lives in the secret, That lives in hidden places,

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Destroying the sacrifice of the divinities. The role of the earth with confusion, They invoked rain and rain did not fall, They went back to Olodumare, to ask him Where is your 17th divinity? They said because she is a woman, She is regarded as irrelevant. Olodumare told them to go back and put Osun in her deserved place, They went back and put her in her deserved place. They came back, They started to rule the earth, Things started to move on properly well. Ovum became fetus and sperm became baby; And rain started to fall. Whoever pounded yam and does not have the consent of Osun. The pounded yam will be full of lumps. Whoever stirs yam flour, And give no vantage place to Osun, The food will be too soft. Whatever food that is prepared without Osun, The food will not be good We are now complete in taking decision, Osun is of vital relevance. Osun said she is not alone, She created their awareness to All other goddesses including Aje of Benin- city, She is also a woman. Okun native of Irada city, She is a woman. Ide of Ikopa city, She is a woman. Oya that wears robe sew with fire, She is a woman. Aje (witches) native of Ota-city, They are women. Osun is of vital relevance, Osun we brought your consent to all issues.

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Nobody can be enemy of water, We use water to bath, We drink water, We meet water all the time in full, Water can never be disgraced. Join me to shout, Osun ore Yeye o! Ore Yeye o! Osun thus formed the first congregation of the Iya Mi, also called witches. No rituals or religious sacrifices occur among the Yoruba without paying homage to the Iya Mi. These elderly powerful women are highly respected by both the ruled and the ruler. The ability to menstruate and have children are features assumed for women, but with the cessation of menstruation, a woman relinquishes her birthing role and thus loses a crucial component of womanhood, according to the perception of many African cultures. At this stage, she is neither male nor female, and this ambiguity represents a threat to many males. Her liminal classification is unsettling to the men. The term ‘‘witchcraft,’’ imprecise and ruinously nuanced in the English language, is one of the most widespread explanations preferred for an elder woman’s new status based on her advancing biological life stage and new social status. More often than not, accusations of witchcraft are a sign of the insecurity of the accuser. The witch or woman of power is perceived to be a nonconformist who cannot be retained within the confines of the patriarchal religious and social construction of womanhood. Witchcraft is a concept imbued with mystery, superstitions, and assumptions. It can be regarded as a product of the construction and use of power in human experiences. It could be described as the eternal struggle of the ‘‘sexes’’ to control the forces of life. The power structure in a hierarchical society usually associates witchcraft with females. Witches are perceived as women differing in age depending on the dynamics of the society concerned. Some describe witchcraft as an explanatory recourse for people who need emotional reassurance and some form of false understanding in the absence of significant scientific knowledge. The realities of daily living with notions and practices of witchcraft in Africa, however, render such a lackadaisical approach unacceptable. Examples abound in African daily experiences to show clearly that the practice of witchcraft exists. The question to ask then is not if witchcraft exists in Africa, but why the concept is linked with femininity. Again, why are some groups of women, usually elder unmarried females, more often accused of being witches than others? African cultures attribute wisdom as belonging to the female gender. This is an implicit reference to the creative link between the divine and

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women in the process of (pro)creation. African philosophy recognizes women as being wise—positively and negatively: positively because women are endowed to manage difficult situations successfully, and negatively, because this wisdom could manifest as craftiness and deceit. Further, wisdom carries significant spiritual dimensions in some African cultures. Among the Yoruba, wisdom is perceived as belonging to the custodians of tradition (awo) including the prominent Iya Mi group (witches). Despite the dual perspective of African perception of women as mentioned above, the negative perception is prioritized on many occasions. The link between wisdom and witchcraft in Africa is therefore situational and dynamic. It is difficult to define witchcraft because of its mystic character. Is witchcraft acquired through the culture, or is it innate through genetic heritage? The mode of operation is a mystery because nobody is ready to declare herself a witch. Members of the witchcraft guild are reported by former members, who have converted to Christianity, to attend meetings in animal forms at odd hours of the day. In Africa, witchcraft is perceived with an authenticity attested to by many examples of inexplicable situations cited by many in their communities. There are certain prominent features of witchcraft in Africa. Usually, witchcraft is construed as wicked and used for evil machinations, though exceptions may be cited. Alleged witches are often women who ‘‘refuse to submit to the ego-restraints and self-denial necessary for social intercourse.’’ Such accused women are usually economically independent; that by implication points to the inadequacy of patriarchal control. Widows are accused of witchcraft oftentimes because they remain outside of the social control of males, and these women may remain economically independent. In some communities, witchcraft is perceived as an art of the wise. Specifically, among the Yoruba, the Iya Mi are seen as wise and powerful women who wield their powers to achieve positive and negative agendas as situations may dictate. This group of wise women is vested with tremendous power and exerts far-reaching influences in the Yoruba polity. Women’s sexuality is, however, not left without set boundaries and control through sex taboo and regulations that guide the male and female relationship.

BOUNDARIES FOR YORUBA WOMEN’S SEXUALITY The Yoruba subscribe to the stance that sex is a private affair that should not be discussed openly. The regulations that serve as boundaries for women’s sexuality among the Yoruba are usually products of the people’s religious ethos, but with scope that extends to health, social, and economic spheres. The agenda for these regulations is targeted at maintaining the good relations between women and the unseen members of the society (ancestors and spirits). Such regulations manifest at the ritual space or as

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taboos in the society. Examples of these regulations are discussed and analyzed below. A pregnant woman should not lick honey or eat eggs. A pregnant woman should avoid sex, and any man that engages in sexual relations with a pregnant woman will be inflicted with perennial poverty. These rules are to ensure adequate rest for the pregnant woman and minimize chances of mishap to the unborn child. A new mother should not resume sex until the child is weaned. A woman is not expected to express a desire for sex either explicitly or implicitly in any situation, as this would present her as a harlot. A good woman is sexually passive. A woman is forbidden to climb palm trees to avoid the exposure of the details of her anatomy to people around. This injunction is aimed at maintaining chastity. Also, a woman should be a virgin at marriage; premarital sexual relations are not allowed in the traditional Yoruba society. After marriage, fidelity is the rule for women, as any form of extramarital affair engaged in by the woman is frowned upon. Though it is true that the practice of concubinage is a reality among the Yoruba, women who engage in such practice do so in secrecy. In another parlance, issues relating to the monthly menstruation of women are shrouded in secrecy, because it is seen as a mystery and a conveyor of power that may nullify powerful preparations in the ritual space. For instance, during the Ife/Modakeke clash in 1999, in Osun State, Nigeria, women were requested to bring their menstrual pad for spiritual preparations towards ensuring victory at war. Again, sexual relationships in the daytime or on the bare floor are banned. It is believed that daytime sexual relations will produce albino children, whereas sexual relations on the bare floor may hinder good harvest of crops. The discussion of sexual organs, relations, and practices by women is not allowed, because it is regarded as a sign of brashness and unrefinement.

RITUALS ON YORUBA WOMEN’S SEXUALITY Rituals concerned with women’s sexuality vary in many African societies. Examples of such rituals include female circumcision ceremonies. For the Yoruba, female circumcision and marriage are two major ritual occasions concerned with female sexuality. The Yoruba circumcise the female child usually before the first birthday. Particular families in each society are vested with the responsibility of circumcision; they are called oloola, and such knowledge is passed down from generation to generation. The Yoruba philosophy that undergirds female circumcision can best be described as the control of women’s sexuality. The clitoris is identified as a sensitive sexual organ that predisposes the woman to be sexually aroused; hence, if it is disabled the result will be a reduction of the woman’s

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disposition towards sexual promiscuity. Circumcision among the Yoruba is done early in the morning, usually before 7 a.m. The mother is excused from the scene because she is emotionally involved with the child. The person who circumcises the child is assisted by two or three women or men. A snail is killed by breaking a hole in its shell and the fluid from it is poured on the ground with prayers and recitations at the venue of the operation. The fluid from the snail signifies mellowness, ease, and positivism. It is seen as a means to ensure the softening of the clitoris and a positive outcome of the operation. Herbal preparations are then used on the wound to control blood loss and aid in the subsequent healing of the wound. Diverse reactions have attended the practice of female circumcision in Africa. These range from actual rejection of the practice to the labeling of the practice with prejudiced designation. Some attempt to understand the content and context of the practice. Whatever the reaction it elicits, suffice it to note that the practice of female circumcision among the Yoruba is designed to curtail women’s sexuality in a ritualistic atmosphere. Female circumcision is seldom practiced today among the Yoruba due to the influence of Westernization.

RELIGION AS THE INTERSECTION OF POWER AND VULNERABILITY Both the vulnerability and power attributes that emanate from considering women’s sexuality among the Yoruba are to be located in the people’s religion. Social roles are often times prescriptions that are rooted in Yoruba religious traditions. Consequently, women’s sexuality among the Yoruba exhibit spiritual dimensions that cannot be ignored. Like the general reaction of the Yoruba to women in the society, the reactions to women’s sexuality are also ambiguous. The positive side translates to power for the Yoruba woman, which includes motherhood, menstruation, and women’s spiritual groups, like the Iya Mi. Motherhood confers power through the spiritual connotations given to the blood shed at childbirth and the mother’s breast milk that nurtures the child. Though these are cultural elements stemming from perceptions of biological processes at the general level, it is the spiritual dimension that imbues both elements with power. Again, in Yoruba settings, women’s menstruation is a conveyor of power, and any restriction placed on it is out of respect rather than due to an assumed contagion attributed to it. In addition, the Iya Mi is a group of wise and influential women in the Yoruba polity. The origin of the group may be traced to Yoruba cosmology with a strong bonding of all mothers. The negative side of this ambiguous stance of the Yoruba on women’s sexuality translates to restrictive sexual expression, manipulation, and subservience.

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Restrictions on sexual expression for women are due to the assumption that women’s sexuality is communally owned and not a private issue at all. Women are thus regarded as tools for producing children and perpetuating the society. These restrictions thus strip women of any other role as persons apart from the social role of motherhood. A direct result of this is the high priority that Yoruba women place on motherhood, so much so that a childless woman feels incomplete and unfulfilled. The pressure to be a mother at all cost at one level and to be the mother of sons at another level has been known to drive some women to unimaginable extremes. Also, manipulation occurs in different ways both before and after marriage concerning women’s sexuality. A clear case is the ability of the husband in a polygamous setting to manipulate the many wives by using divide and rule tactics. In a typical polygamous setting, the wives see each other as enemies and struggle through different methods to win and sustain the ‘‘love’’ of their husband. Indeed, some husbands have lost their lives in the midst of many wives trying their best to surpass each other in their struggle for his attention. Some of such situations are attributed to evil machinations such as witchcraft and sorcery, but in other cases it plainly is a case of extreme stress and the attending conditions such as hypertension and, eventually, cardiac arrest or stroke. These acts of manipulation ultimately result in subservient status for the woman. The status of woman is traced directly to her sexuality, which forms one of the principal grounds for the construction of her identity, as noted earlier.

CONCLUSION This chapter has presented an analysis of women’s sexuality among the Yoruba as a means of both empowerment and vulnerability. The role of religion in this enterprise also engaged our attention. The interesting observation on women’s sexuality among the Yoruba is that both the avenues for power and vulnerability are experienced simultaneously on a daily basis. The challenge is how to balance these extreme experiences in the same setting. The influence of religion in this complex situationis pervasive. In this regard, positive and negative ramifications may be noted for the expressions of women’s sexuality among the Yoruba. Because of the Yoruba social setting, it is doubtful that women’s sexuality could ever be regarded as a private issue; consequently, I believe that it will continue to provide interesting developments in its expressions and management.

NOTE 1. John S.Mbiti, African Religions and Philosophy (London: Heinemann, 1969), 142.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Akintunde, D. O., ed. African Culture and the Quest for Women’s Rights. Lagos, Nigeria: SEFER Books, 2001. Awe, B. Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective. Ibadan: Sankore/Bookcraft, 1992. Babatunde, E. Women’s Rites Versus Women’s Rights: A Study of Circumcision among the Ketu Yoruba of South Western Nigeria. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, 1998. Badejo, D. Osun Seegesi-The Elegant Deity of Wealth, Power and Femininity. Trenton: Africa World Press, 1996. Barber, K. I Could Speak Till Tomorrow: Oriki, Women, and the Past in a Yoruba Town. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991. Bascom, W. The Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, 1969. Olajubu, O. Women in Yoruba Religious Sphere. New York: Suny Press, 2003. Oluwole, S. Womanhood in Yoruba Traditional Thought. Bayreuth: IwalewaHaus, 1993. Opefeyitimi, A. ‘‘Womb to Tomb: Yoruba Women, Power over Life and Death.’’ Ife-Annals of the Institute of Cultural Studies. Ile-Ife: Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, 1994. Opeola, S. M. ‘‘Yoruba Women in Interaction with Men’s Lives.’’ Cultural Studies in Ife: Institute of Cultural Studies. Ile-Ife: Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria, 1994. Oyewumi, O. The Invention of Women. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999.

INTERVIEWS Pa Josiah Abegunde, aged 82, at his residence, No. 22 Station Road, Osogbo, Osun State, Nigeria, on May 10, 2008. Madam bosede Akinwande, aged 67, at her shrine, LGA primary school area, Ilobu, Osun State, on May 17, 2008. Madam Fadaka Aremu, aged 65, at her residence, Okelerin area, Ogbomoso, on July 23, 2008. Iyanifa ‘Doyin Olosun, aged 44 at her residence, No. 4 Ibokun Road, Osogbo, Osun State, on June 21, 2008.

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Women, World View, and Religious Practice

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A Religion of the Interstices: Asian Pacific American Women and Multiple Religious Practices Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier

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n a world where religion is peddled in an international market of tastetesting and buffet-style dabbling, it may seem a bit bourgeois to focus on the trendy topic of multiple religious practices. Many North American Christians attend their churches on Sundays, take yoga classes or Buddhist meditation during the week, and have seemingly little trouble crossing over and back across the boundaries of worlds and traditions. The accessibility and influence of the Internet have brought people into the virtual world of religious practice, as well, where people can take online religious personality tests, experiment with online covens, and learn about Muslim belief and practice from the comfort of their living rooms—and all in the span of a few short hours. Such realities of North American societies can therefore be seen as a phenomenon of ‘‘first’’ world excess, where people have the time and money to enter the grand buffet of the American religious marketplace, sampling the delights of religious practices without the responsibilities to the communities from which these ‘‘foods’’ come. Yet the phenomenon is neither new nor a mere manifestation of white, middle and upper class, Christian concern. While humans throughout history have drawn boundaries around their communities, people have been

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crossing those boundaries for just as long as people have sought to draw them. Moreover, the ‘‘orthodox’’ core of such traditions who have the power to define such boundaries often do so not only over and against the ‘‘outside other,’’ but do so against the ‘‘inside other,’’ against persons marginalized by the orthodox elite. Thus, practice at the boundaries of such religions will inevitably play within these ambiguous spaces. Here, there is a fundamental difference between the multiple religious practices of ‘‘outside insiders’’ or ‘‘inside outsiders’’ and the multiple religious practices of ‘‘mainstream’’ white, middle class Christian American society: this is the difference of power. The perspective of the ‘‘mainstream’’ core is the perspective of the master narrative, coopting practices of the exotic ‘‘other’’ into that master narrative, as the master sees fit, domesticating those practices and interpreting them through the master lens. The other perspectives are those from the underbellies, fissures, and cracks of those traditions. Creatively transforming, acting, interpreting and subverting the master narrative, such practices blur boundaries and hold multiple perspectives in tension. Nevertheless, even at the boundaries of religions, there is a more subtle power dynamic due to the pressures of the history of the Christian imperialist project that must not be lost. Affiliation with Christianity, in any sense, means some connection to the history of Christian conquest and erasure of indigenous people’s history, religion, and culture. Thus, marginalized Christians must understand that they, too, are a part of this history and must be wary of naively dabbling in other religious traditions. Given these complex power dynamics and the realities of syncretistic practices in North America today, it is necessary to develop an adequate discourse for rethinking religion at the nexus of multiple religious practices. In this chapter, I examine the multireligious phenomenon through the lens of Christian Asian Pacific American (APA) women’s practices, arguing that their religio-cultural negotiations provide us such a discourse, a ‘‘new’’ way of religion as multireligious process that emerges within the spaces between ‘‘traditional’’ religion and religious practices. Through Christian APA women’s own voices, stories, and experiences of multiple practices, I make several proposals for thinking constructively and ethically about engagement in multiple religious practices. I begin with a religious and cultural discourse that has been developed out of Asian Pacific American women’s negotiations of their many worlds. This discourse is rooted in the metaphor of interstitial integrity, the wholeness that is found between those seemingly contradictory worlds. I deepen the religious dimension of the discourse, emphasizing the inevitable interconnection of religious and cultural betweenness. This interconnection has resulted from the very real plurality of Christian Asian and Asian American religious expressions. Here I focus on how Christian Asian and Asian Pacific American women negotiate and interpret their religiously diverse contexts. In order to provide a

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theoretical framework for a religio-cultural interstitial integrity that uses the lens of Asian and Asian Pacific American women’s flourishing as an interpretive key, I move to integrate a theory of religions as Supreme Ways in intersection. This provides a renewed matrix for thinking about Asian and Asian American women’s ‘‘Christian practices.’’ I finally move to make some concrete suggestions for encouraging this ‘‘new’’ religious reality that emerges from women’s practices, paying special attention to the complex, interrelated power dynamics involved in multiple religious practices.

INTERSTITIAL INTEGRITY For theologian Rita Nakashima Brock, ‘‘Asian Pacific American’’ is a socio-political construction, drawing on over 200 years of history. To appropriate the term ‘‘Asian Pacific American,’’ however, requires ‘‘conscious reflection on the experience of living in North Atlantic society with the racial features of Asians and Pacific islanders and from the knowledge of history of Asian and Pacific peoples in the United States.’’1 While there is not one essential experience of ‘‘being’’ Asian Pacific American among the multitude of APA languages and cultures, some shared elements include European colonization, American imperialism and racism in America, specifically: lynchings, forced labor, false imprisonment, institutional and individual racism, sexism, exoticization, and stereotyping.2 Nevertheless, Asian Pacific Americans (APA) have survived, subverted, and flourished, developing strategies for balancing and negotiating their multiple worlds of ‘‘Americanness’’ and ‘‘Asianness’’. APAs exist in and between both worlds, being simultaneous ‘‘insiders’’ and ‘‘outsiders.’’ Grace Ji-Sun Kim illustrates this well, saying, Am I a Korean, a Canadian, or both? My first visit back to Korea in 1980 made me realize that I am not a ‘‘total Korean.’’ I just did not fit in. Koreans in Korea thought I was different from them and had become too Westernized. But then in Canada, I did not really fit in either. I was not like the other Canadians. I looked different, ate different foods, and spoke a foreign language. Therefore I was neither Korean nor Canadian and did not really have a sense of belonging to either. Only when I began to study the unique identity of immigrants did I come to the realization that I was ‘‘in between’’ two cultures.3

Moreover, the diverse nonduality of East Asian religious, metaphysical, and cultural beliefs, leads to the embracing of multiplicity, fluidity, and ambiguity. The cultural background of this multiplicity combined with the APA experiences of multiple belonging lead to a ‘‘both/and’’ Asian Pacific American identity.4

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This both/and sensibility is particularly pertinent for APA women. The additional complexities of gender further highlight the ambivalence and polyvalence of balancing worlds. [F]ilms like Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow and television shows like Ally McBeal continue to portray Asian women as dragon ladies. Bai Ling in the Sky Captain film plays a silent but menacing presence who symbolizes violence and impeding evil. Ling Woo, played by Lucy Liu on Ally McBeal, is the sly and callous law firm dominatrix. On the opposite end of the spectrum, Asian American women are portrayed as petite and subservient. She goes by other names: China doll, geisha girl . . . . The China doll and the geisha girl evoke pictures of quiet, docile, overly feminine women whose main role is to please and serve men. These images emphasize the physical body over intelligence or voice. What is conveyed is that Asian women are useful only to serve, to be looked at or to be sexually exploited.5

Asian Pacific American women therefore find their status as ‘‘in-between’’ even more so complicated by the dynamics of gender operative in ‘‘Asia’’ and ‘‘America’’ and the collision of these worlds. Whether Asian Pacific American women are exoticized by many white males, subordinated by certain brown males, or essentialized and tokenized by various North Atlantic white feminists, they also find many liberating aspects in all these worlds. Thus, this liminality means that one’s sense of self tends to be of multiplicity and fluidity, of moving between and among, of shifting perspectives and voices.6 Finding an ‘‘authentic’’ self for APA women does not necessitate an integration of all worlds, but an ability to move and negotiate between these spaces in such a way as to be life-giving for them. Rather than describe this as marginality or liminality, Brock wants to call this journey of self ‘‘interstitial integrity.’’ While marginality and liminality describe the oppression and hegemony of the dominant culture vis a` visself, interstitial integrity captures also the agency of self in subverting and destabilizing that oppression. Interstitiality is in-betweenness; but it is a betweenness that is strong and connective, like the connective tissue in the body. Thus, interstitial integrity is both subversive and restorative.7 An Asian Pacific American woman of interstitial integrity finds points of connection in these thresholds of being and negotiates them in a never-ending back-and-forth process of weaving together worlds and flourishing in these interweavings. Brock has narrowed her focus to APA women, in order to draw forth a notion of interstitial integrity as a way of understanding the multiple perspectives and voices of self, perspectives that are simultaneously limiting

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and liberating. The struggle of Asian Pacific American women is indeed a struggle of voices ignored; but it is also a struggle of women speaking, struggling, subverting, liberating, and creating. M. Elaine Mar says in the introduction to her memoir, I grew up in the back room of a Chinese restaurant watching my family labor through thirteen-hour days, seven days a week. We served up foods defined as ‘‘Chinese’’ by the restaurant owners, Annie and Casey Rosenberg, although we ourselves had never tasted egg foo yung or sweet and sour pork before . . . . We didn’t sustain ourselves with ancient fables and Confucian proverbs. Instead, we watched Gunsmoke on a twelve-inch black-and-white TV (with the sound turned off, since the adults didn’t understand English) and bickered in Toishanese, an obscure rural Chinese dialect (our native language) when the pressure became too intense. The adults spent their free time betting on horses, greyhounds, and American men wearing football helmets. To celebrate the lunar new year, we went to a Chinese social club for a banquet that was really another excuse for gambling . . . . The truth is, my childhood community—an informal Chinatown, since I grew up in Denver, where the boundaries were not defined by city blocks—has more in common with Harlem, Appalachia, and an Indian reservation than with the fantasy of a Horatio Alger story. The same entrenched barriers to success are in place, the same isolation from mainstream American culture, the same political disenfranchisement. I wrote this book because I needed to reveal these truths about myself: that at my core I am more ‘‘minority’’ than ‘‘model’’; that as an American I continue to lie if I perpetuate the myth of a classless, integrated America. I wrote this book because I got tired of lying about who I am, because I wanted to give voice to a community that has been silent, because I wanted to tell my family that I have not forgotten. And although she can’t read the words, I sent my mother several copies. She called recently to tell me that she’d received them. ‘‘I only recognized one word,’’ she said, and pronounced very carefully, in English, ‘‘daugh-ter.’’8

Interstitial integrity is this struggle of self, the struggle to give voice, the struggle to negotiate worlds, cultures, religions, genders, and perspectives: it is the struggle of liberation. Indeed, interstitial integrity is the challenge for many more than APA women, descriptive of anyone who lives among multiple worlds.9 As Brock reflects further on connective spaces, she discusses Wendy Law-Yone’s novel, The Coffin Tree.10 This novel chronicles the journey of a Burmese woman who immigrates to the United States. In America, she struggles to reconcile the culture from which she came, the culture that

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she knows, and the culture she finds in America. Yet, ‘‘knowing the complexity and ambiguities of her life makes her wise and finally lead her to a decision to survive . . . . In her own particular integrity, she finds an American life.’’11 The crisscrossing of cultures in this woman’s own integrity mirrors the realities of how ‘‘hyphenated Americans’’ have always negotiated between identities and worlds. In crossing worlds, they live in-between them, creatively holding worlds in the balance. Thus, interstitial integrity can illuminate any number of experiences where the person struggles to live in, among, and between multiple locations. The goal of true interstitial integrity is not simple survival; rather, it is even more a flourishing within these interstices, these junctures of worlds. As Maxine Hong Kingston learns in her classic memoir, The Woman Warrior, ‘‘There is no unambiguous, singular place to be, only the increasing skill in learning to talk and to know herself through all her relationships.’’12 In learning to ‘‘talk story,’’ Kingston says, Chinese-Americans, when you try to understand what things in you are Chinese, how do you separate what is peculiar to childhood, to poverty, insanities, one family, your mother who marked your growing with stories, from what is Chinese? What is Chinese tradition and what is the movies? If I want to learn what clothes my aunt wore, whether flashy or ordinary, I would have to begin, ‘‘Remember Father’s drowned-in-the-well sister?’’13

For ‘‘flourishing,’’ ‘‘authenticity,’’ or ‘‘liberation,’’ then, this interstitial integrity is revealed in learning how to navigate these worlds, rather than losing oneself in hopeless fragmentation. Finally, for Brock, interstitial integrity is a Christian theological category. Those in-between spaces are the spaces of sin and salvation, the spaces of brokenness and the spaces of wholeness, or grace. If ‘‘integr(ity) ation is ongoing renewal and restoration, learning how to live in the tensions of holding together all the complex parts of who we are,’’14 the process of interstitial integrity brings us into contact with ourselves, others and God. The spaces between are the spaces crisscrossed, overlapped, and stitched together, the spaces of building the graced (though plural) community.

RELIGIOUS PRACTICE BETWEEN WORLDS Asian Pacific American women’s religious practices mirror their complex negotiation between their many, sometimes conflicting traditions and worlds. Here, the comfortable boundaries of ‘‘religion’’ break down in the face of ‘‘culture,’’ as APA women bring together Christian, Confucian, Buddhist, Shinto, and even tribal indigenous practices. I now turn to Christian

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Asian American women’s theologies, examining the ways these women incorporate reflection on and practice of multiple religious traditions. In 1978, the Pacific and Asian Center for Theology and Strategies (PACTS) initiated a consultation for Christian Asian American women in ministry. This historic event was the first ecumenical consultation of Asian American women, and was the first time for many theologically educated Asian American women to come to the same place, share their struggles, and support each other in their work. Naomi Southard and Rita Nakashima Brock were present at this consultation (as well as the second consultation in 1981), and they used it as their jumping off point for reporting their findings and then reflecting on the future of Asian American women’s theology. According to Southard and Brock, many of the women at the consultation felt that their theological education—even if it did include feminist, liberation, and Asian men’s theologies—did not speak to (or for) them. They did not have a ‘‘theological home,’’ yet they continued to struggle, work, and flourish through their own unique strategies of empowerment. Other Americans often brand Asian Americans (even after generations of living in America) as foreigners, expected to speak for all Asians as experts; and at the same time, Asians from Asia often assume that Asian Americans have ‘‘lost their culture,’’ capitulating and assimilating to white American culture. Asian American women are further caught between patriarchal assumptions and stereotypes both in American and Asian worlds. This will become heightened for women in ministry. The difficulties compound, as some must deal with exclusivity in the realms of language, theology, and institutions. Even patriarchal ideas from other religious traditions persist in Christian Asian American communities. As a result, Asian American female ministers find themselves belonging to Christian, American, and Asian worlds, yet being marginalized in all of them. Southard and Brock argue that Asian American women must therefore build their own theological home.15 In building such a home, Southard and Brock propose that Asian American women need to construct a more flexible understanding of ‘‘God’’ and ‘‘church.’’ This new understanding must balance diversity and difference with unity. It must not be focused on doctrinal agreement, but rather construct an ‘‘ecumenical unity’’ that is based ‘‘in the fluid, everchanging realities of life.’’16 The Christian church must moreover accommodate plural and diverse ways of speaking of the sacred. ‘‘Our theology must move out of the mode of exclusive Christian monotheism and toward an inclusive, pluralistic monotheism, with room for a diversity of ways to speak about the sacred dimension of life.’’17 Asian American women belong to and are marginalized in multiple worlds; yet, they make their home in the constant moving between the boundaries of these worlds. These worlds include the diverse religious worlds of Asia and Asian America.

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Brock picks up this theme of religious diversity in her development of an Asian American thealogy,18 a perspective that ‘‘rises out of the mists of racism and sexism and begins by embracing and affirming as equals both the power of context and particularity—of mirrors of identity—and our spiritual hunger for principles of connection and community—of murmurs of speech.’’19 The framework of this thealogy is the story of the Shinto Sun goddess, Amaterasu, who retreats to her cave, plunging the Earth into dark winter after her brother Susanowo defiles her fields and heavenly hall. In order to lure her from her cave, the goddess Amenouzume performs an erotic dance that generates sufficient noise by the other gods and goddesses to make her curious enough to open her door. Amenouzume had hung a mirror in front of the cave, and Amaterasu becomes dazzled by her own image. The deities close off the entrance to Amaterasu’s cave, and spring begins. This mirror, symbol for Amaterasu and the imperial family, is sacred for Shinto. Brock retrieves this symbol for Asian American thealogy: ‘‘Without a true mirror, we cannot know ourselves. And without mirrors we remain in caves of silence.’’20 Out of the caves of silence, the misty darkness of racism and sexism, Asian American women emerge and speak their own healing realities. Brock says, ‘‘I do not seek to be inclusive of all Asian American women, but to hang some thealogical mirrors so that our many voices might begin to be audible.’’21 Thus, Brock takes this sacred symbol of the mirror in Shinto to describe her own project and the task of Asian American thealogy. Moreover, Brock argues that there is a Buddhist ‘‘undercurrent’’ in Asian American thought that turns inward to self-awareness, and situates compassion, wisdom, and ethics within the larger whole of the harmonious, beautiful cosmos. She believes this is an important contribution for Western Christianity. At the same time, Buddhism is embedded in a patriarchal context, all too often lacking in adequate social analysis. ‘‘This lack of social analysis casts Buddhist language about suffering in a fatalistic mode, exemplified in Asian America by the Japanese concept of shi kata oanai—it can’t be helped—a phrase murmured in the face of injustice and oppression.’’22 Thus, both Christian and Buddhist analysis tend to denigrate feelings and passions. This is where Western feminist analysis can help. The influence of Buddhism in Asian America is therefore positive, providing contextual insight for Asian American thealogians. At the same time, it must be subject to Western feminist critique as much as Christianity. The flourishing of Asian American women provides the hermeneutical key for Asian American thealogy. The boundaries of religious traditions and their practices are therefore negotiated according to this key. Brock argues that she searches in all places where she can feel rooted in connection, indiscriminate of the source’s ‘‘ideological purity.’’23 Indeed, many Asian American women feel similarly.24 In drawing on Shamanistic sources in Asian religions, women can

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find a women-centered spirituality that affirms them.25 In these traditions, Asian American thealogy discovers many images, symbols, rituals, and practices for constructing liberative mirrors. Nevertheless, Brock cautions against romanticizing these resources. Shamanistic and women-centered traditions have nevertheless been handed down and changed by patriarchal contexts. Indeed, even the Amaterasu myth has a patriarchal overlay that seeks to justify the male emperor and his lineage. Amaterasu’s silence becomes the ideal for Asian women’s silence.26 Therefore, in drawing on an ancient past and on religious traditions other than Christianity (and even on symbols and narratives within or at the ‘‘edges’’ of Christian orthodoxy), Asian American thealogy must be careful to keep the focus on Asian American women themselves. Asian American thealogical appropriation of religious symbols outside the boundaries of Christianity, as it is traditionally understood, aims simply at this: to hang mirrors of truth, enabling themselves and others to know themselves and heal, ‘‘for only in the full self-knowledge of pain and the sharing of that pain with others will we be able to seek, with compassion, healing for the community of creation.’’27 Asian American women live among multiple worlds, and those worlds are religiously plural, messy and overlapping. The use of religious symbols and practices is therefore governed by Asian American women’s flourishing. Asian and Asian American Christianity is not therefore bounded by a strict system of orthodoxy; it is rather oriented on the orthopraxic emphasis of APA women themselves. This principle for engagement in multiple religious practices is called ‘‘survival-liberation centered syncretism’’ by Chung Hyun Kyung. In their struggle for survival and liberation in this unjust, women-hating world, poor Asian women have approached many different religious sources for sustenance and empowerment. What matters for them is not doctrinal orthodoxy . . . . What matters to Asian women is survival and the liberation of themselves and their communities. What matters for them is not Jesus, Sakyamumi, Mohammed, Confucius, Kwan In, or Ina, but rather the life force which empowers them to claim their humanity. Asian women selectively have chosen life-giving elements of their culture and religions and have woven new patterns of religious meaning.28

Asian American women have picked up on this practice, emphasizing the multireligious contexts of Asian Christianities and the syncretistic realities of the history of Christianity in Asia. Asian Christianities manifest the influence of Confucianism, Buddhism, Shamanism, and many other Asian religious traditions. By extension, many Asian Pacific American women therefore argue that they cannot advocate for a false notion of a ‘‘pure’’ Christianity, and instead embrace the multireligious contexts of their heritages

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and cultures.29 Asian and Asian American Christian theology is seen as fundamentally religiously plural, and boundaries of ‘‘Christian theology’’ are seen as expanding outward and into the edges of multiple religious traditions and practices. In writing Asian American women’s theologies, a multireligious and survival-liberation oriented syncretistic approach means that Christian Asian Pacific American women may (indeed, must) engage in multiple religious practices, even if maintaining a ‘‘Christian’’ identity.

SUPREME WAYS IN INTERSECTION30 The realities of Asian Pacific American women’s multiple practices are difficult to fit into existing theoretical frameworks. Recent work has critically and helpfully explored the diverse phenomena of ‘‘multiple religious belonging’’ or ‘‘double belonging.’’31 And while some data supports this as a reality among Asian North American communities, 32 the more common Asian Pacific American experience seems to involve the predicament of practicing other religio-cultural rituals alongside one’s ‘‘dominant’’ tradition.33 Indeed, the theological work by the Asian American women I have discussed above is out of an explicit Christian horizon; and the challenge that arises from this predicament is to provide a theory for rethinking ‘‘religion’’ and multiple religious practices in light of such survival-liberation-centered syncretism. Through what he calls the ‘‘praxis of comparative theology,’’34 Ruben Habito reflects on some of the implications of three Japanese Buddhist understandings of the Supreme Way and of the ‘‘other’’ for a Roman Catholic perspective and develops a theory of religions as ‘‘Supreme Ways in intersection.’’ His Catholic perspective arises out of the Vatican II principle in Nostra Aetate no. 2, that the ‘‘Catholic Church rejects nothing of those things which are true and holy’’35 in religious traditions other than Christianity. Habito takes this principle one step further, asking: What can be learned from those things that are true and holy in other religious world views? Underlying Habito’s essay is a concern to articulate a way that allows one to remain faithful to one’s own religious commitments, while at the same time be able to relate to one another as members of a global community engaged in the struggle for justice.36 In order to achieve these dual ends, practitioners must be open to learn from the religious other, finding what is true and holy in those other religious traditions and using it as a bridge for the common struggle against injustice. Habito argues that religious peoples tend to see their own tradition as the supreme way.37 The question for Habito, then, is not to come up with a theory that puts religions on the same relative footing or to figure out how other religious persons are ‘‘saved’’: these approaches misperceive the encounter between faithful people of differing religious traditions as confrontation of conflicting absolutes, an argument about which path is

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supreme and which claims are false. Instead, the question is about how to construct the interreligious encounter so that it can instead be one of learning and transformation for all involved. Ruben Habito therefore searches in conversation with Japanese Buddhism to develop a model for religion that allows people to be faithful to their own religious commitments, while at the same time to be open to true listening and learning. Through his dialogue with three Japanese Buddhists and Catholic theology, he proposes to see religious traditions as Supreme Ways in intersection. This model rejects the traditional categories of exclusivism, inclusivism, and pluralism. None of these positions allow one to be adequately faithful to one’s own religious commitments, while at the same time be open to relating to the other with the humble willingness to learn. A theory of Supreme Ways in intersection, on the other hand, allows for this dual end. Under the model of Supreme Ways in intersection, Habito argues that one can believe that one’s way is Supreme, while still allowing for the possibility that other ways are valid.38 The proposal of Supreme Ways in intersection does not have an overarching structure onto which religious traditions become imposed. Instead, this model is a model whereby religious believers honestly and faithfully believe their own path to be supreme, yet recognize the many fissures, openings, and bridges allowing them to travel to and with other paths. Envisioning religious traditions as Supreme Ways in intersection therefore shifts the focus away from the metaphysical relationship between various religious traditions, and instead provides a model of thinking that simultaneously honors particular religious commitments, as well as openness to the religious other. In relationship with other people of faith, we can come to understand other religious people and paths, as well as learn about our own. This model also allows us to begin to unpack some of the complexities already noted in Asian American ethno-religious practices. One of the interesting aspects of my own background is that I have often felt that my own self or identity was the battleground onto which competing absolute claims, cultural and religious, were inscribed. Growing up in a predominantly white upper-middle class area of St. Louis as a girl of mixed Japanese and German ethnicity, I often felt that there were conflicting absolute claims being made rather violently over who I was or who I could be. Was I white or was I yellow? Insofar as others were concerned, I wasn’t quite either. Schoolmates and family (other than my immediate family) sent out mixed messages. I remember food being particularly relevant in this regard. Was I eating fast food and potato chips like ‘‘white people’’ or ‘‘weird’’ Japanese food? Or on the other side, was I capitulating to white American culture by eating things such as fast food and potato chips? At the same time, it was made abundantly clear that no matter what I ate or did (whether it was learning Japanese dance

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and Taiko drums or learning baseball and soccer), I could never be rightfully called white or yellow. I have been called every racial slur imaginable, none of which actually applied to me. Moreover, my mixed heritage results in ambiguous features, making me difficult to identify or categorize. This is something that causes great anxiety in others, and the almost morbid fascination over me because of this consequently caused great anxiety in myself. Religious issues were entangled into these racial and ethnic issues. My mother became Catholic when she married my father, and we were clearly raised as Roman Catholics. However, extended family and cultural associations exposed me to Shinto and Buddhist practices. Whether it was through home altars, storytelling, or elaborate hospitality rituals, I learned that these non-Catholic traditions were somehow essential to my Japanese-ness. This side of my religious experience, however, was in deep conflict with the Catholic education that I was receiving at the same time. I was told that ancestor ‘‘worship’’ was idolatrous, that non-Christians were not ‘‘saved,’’ and that truly committed Christians did not concern themselves with anything ‘‘non-Christian’’ (which also meant ‘‘non-white.’’) I remember vividly a class project in grade school where the students were required to do a report on the saint that they were named after. Apparently, goodCatholics named their children after saints. I, however, was not named after any saint. Instead, I was named after my mother’s family: my middle name is Sayuki, a combination of my great-grandmothers’ names, Sayo and Uki. This was a great shock to the nuns teaching us, hilarious to the students who couldn’t believe what a weird name I had, and a humiliating embarrassment to me. Of course, now I see my name as an incredible honor, but my nine-year-old self was not yet able to see it that way. And so I felt caught at the margins, drifting between two religious and ethnic worlds. They seemed to me to be conflicting absolutes with impossible demands. However, even then, there were intersections that allowed me to hold together my identity. One example is in the importance of ancestors and saints for me. When I learned in my Catholic religious education about saints, what had usually caused me so much turmoil finally clicked into place. The world of the saints captured my religious imagination, and I adopted them as my spiritual ancestors. I took what I learned of the saints and constructed my own altars to them, talking to them and offering them gifts. For me this was one intersection that held together my conflicted worlds, and offered me the ability to begin to negotiate between them, to bring them into relation, so that they no longer seemed to be eternally at odds. Ruben Habito’s model provides a theory for rethinking the complicated dynamics of religion and ethnicity. While I grew up believing what others told me, that these two worlds were absolutes in conflict, my experiences of complicated multi-belonging forced me to negotiate between them.

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My assumption that Catholicism meant belonging to ‘‘white America’’ and Shintoism and Buddhism meant belonging to ‘‘yellow Japan,’’ was a false assumption of conflicting absolutes. Instead, the essentialized categories of ‘‘Christianity,’’ ‘‘Buddhism,’’ ‘‘Asian,’’ ‘‘American,’’ ‘‘white,’’ ‘‘yellow’’ are false, and break down under the complicated realities of identity. My own marginality even now forces me to live at the boundaries, openings, fissures, and crossings—and as Habito points out, these points of intersection can be extremely fruitful places to be. At the same time, Habito points to the reality that most religious believers clearly identify with a particular tradition (even if that tradition is a complicated and open system). This seems to bear out with the experiences of many Christian Asian Pacific American women. Engagement with other practices and traditions, then, is a feature of APA religions more appropriate to the intersections of Supreme Ways than to the language of ‘‘double’’ or ‘‘multiple belonging.’’

RELIGION IN THE INTERSTICES OF MULTIPLE RELIGIOUS PRACTICES Supreme Ways in intersection and interstitial integrity, then, provide an important framework for thinking through APA women’s multiplicity of religious and cultural negotiations. While interstitial integrity illustrates the double-bind that Asian Pacific American women are caught between, but creatively and subversively negotiate, the image of Supreme Ways in intersection gives grounding to the additional complexities of having a ‘‘home’’ religion that is very much at the intersection of Ways, due to the cultural realities of faith in Asia and Asian America today. Asian Pacific American women’s practices point to a wider reality in the current popularity of multiple religious practices. Most people do not commit so wholeheartedly to multiple traditions that they maintain multiple religious world views—rather, symbols, rituals and theologies are held alongside a dominant world view, sometimes to be integrated into that world view and sometimes held in tension with the wider horizon. Even within multiple religiocultural contexts, where Asian Pacific American cultural practices involve religious practices outside of one’s religious tradition, the possibility remains that such appropriations can imperialistically (albeit unintentionally) coopt practices out of their web of communities, traditions, and rituals. Particularly in light of the history of Christian imperialism in Asia, Asian Pacific American Christians must be aware that their multiple practices have implications for existing Confucian, Buddhist, and Shamanistic communities in Asia and Asian America. Nevertheless, using Asian Pacific American women’s engagement in multiple practices as both a warning and as a guide, how might we begin to circumscribe some flexible, semi-permeable boundaries for thinking about the realities of multiple religious practices?

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SURVIVAL-LIBERATION-CENTERED SYNCRETISM Survival-liberation-centered syncretism emphasizes the liberation of Asian and Asian American women in negotiating multiple religious practices. Thus, the use of symbols, narratives, and rituals (whether Christian, Buddhist, indigenous, or otherwise) is primarily understood through the lens of the women who appropriate those sources, not necessarily through the context, traditions, or religious communities from which they come. In adopting this hermeneutical key, however, there is a clear recognition that there are some limits underlying the process of appropriation. As Rita Nakashima Brock points out, for example, it is extremely important not to romanticize uncritically non-Christian Asian practices and traditions. Thus, she subjects Buddhist and Shinto practice to western feminist critique as much as she draws on them for retrieval as a corrective to Western Christianity and feminism. Survival-liberation-centered syncretism, then, utilizes a hermeneutics of suspicion in evaluating all practices and stays focused on the liberation of Asian and Asian American women. The principle of survival-liberation-centered syncretism emphasizes liberative orthopraxis over orthodoxy and ‘‘mainline’’ (white, Western, heterosexual, male) theology. We Asian women must move away from our imposed fear of losing Christian identity, in the opinion of the mainline theological circles, and instead risk that we might be transformed into truly Asian Christians. We have to ask tough questions of the mainline Christian churches and seminaries and also of ourselves. Who owns Christianity? Is Christianity unchangeable? What makes Christianity Christian? How far can we make ourselves vulnerable in order to be both truly Asian and truly Christian?39 At the 1991 World Council of Churches Assembly, Chung Hyun Kyung performed a spirit-calling ritual drawn from Korean Shamanism and created a firestorm of criticism. The theme of the Canberra Assembly was the Holy Spirit, and Chung delivered her plenary address as a Shaman, performing a spirit-exorcising dance and addressing ancestral spirits who have died through suffering and oppression.40 With humble heart and body, let us listen to the cries of creation and the cries of the Spirit within it. Come. The spirit of Hagar, Egyptian, black slave woman exploited and abandoned by Abraham and Sarah, the ancestors of our faith . . . Come. The spirit of Jephthah’s daughter, the victim of her father’s faith, burnt to death for her father’s promise to God if he were to win the war . . . Come. The spirit of Joan of Arc, and of the many other women burnt at the ‘‘witch trials—throughout the medieval era . . .

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Come. The spirit of Jewish people killed in the W chambers during the Holocaust. Come. The spirit of people killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki by atomic bombs. Come. The spirit of Korean women in the Japanese ’’prostitution army’’ during World War II, used and torn by violence-hungry soldier . . . Come. The spirit of the Amazon rain forest now being murdered every day. Come. The spirit of Earth, Air, and Water, raped, tortured, and exploited by human greed for money. Come. The spirit of soldiers, civilians, and sea creatures now dying in the bloody war in the Gulf. Come. The spirit of the Liberator, our brother Jesus, tortured and killed on the cross.41

Full of han (resentment), those who die under unfortunate circumstances pester the living. Shamans release and transform the han, aiding both the living and the dead. Poor women of low socioeconomic status are often Shamans, and therefore Shamanism is closely associated with poor Korean women. Through commonly practiced Shamanistic rituals and storytelling, Korean women are thereby empowered, transforming their own han.42 It is this liberative reality that Chung proclaimed and universalized in her address. This survival-liberation-centered syncretism drew on the tradition of the Korean Shamanism to call forth a new ‘‘Christian’’ reality. While many enthusiastically received Chung’s message, there was also an immediate backlash. A special session had to be convened for Chung to defend her actions, as some Orthodox and Evangelical participants found her ‘‘syncretism’’ dangerously close to heresy and paganism.43 She vigorously defended herself, however, as a theologian who privileges Korean women and the poor.44 This liberative priority breaks down the boundaries between religions further and highlights the importance of multiple religious practice in addressing the problems of our age. The ‘‘preferential option’’ for Asian and Asian American women ought to shift more than our theologies, praxis, and policies; indeed, survival-liberation-centered syncretism challenges religion itself, breaking it open and offering entirely new realities of being.

SYNERGISM Possibly because the principle of survival-liberation-centered syncretism arose from Christian Asian women’s theologies that understood its Christianity to be very much in the minority of the immensely religiously diverse contexts of Asia, there is not a thorough treatment of colonialistic

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implications of such retrievals. Christian Asian North American women, however, cannot ignore these implications; for we are further enmeshed in the ongoing neocolonialism of Western economic and militaristic hegemony. In order to think more critically about the power dynamics involved in multiple religious practices, and in order to make a proposal for a renewed understanding of interstitial religion, I draw on Rita Nakashima Brock and Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite’s concept of ‘‘synergism.’’ In this way, I hope to dialogue with Asian Pacific American women about practicing together ‘‘across’’ traditions, and more adequately within and among the boundaries of such traditions. Brock and Thistlethwaite use the term ‘‘synergism’’ to describe the practice of drawing on the resources of other religious and cultural symbols and traditions for liberation. While syncretism—in the negative sense as they define it—fuses differing religious traditions, it threatens liberation. Synergism, on the other hand, appropriates religious symbols as acts of liberation and hope, keeping a multiperspectival eye on the convergence of multiple traditions, so that practices are not colonialistically coopted. For example, first-world religious seekers who appropriate the spiritual traditions of those colonized by their ancestors without simultaneously working against oppression and contributing to the communities from which they take, contribute to the furthering of new forms of colonialism. When, however, oppressed people draw from the spiritual resources of their own indigenous cultures, resources long marginalized or denied by their oppressors, they act to restore life and to transform the oppressors’ religion into one of their own. To distinguish acts of synergism from acts of syncretism, we might begin by asking what power contexts determine how appropriation is occurring, and whether the act liberates the least powerful from the traditions involved.45

In this distinction between synergism and syncretism, then, Brock and Thistlethwaite develop an important principle based on the recognition of context and power relations involved in multiple religious appropriation. The distinction between synergism and syncretism is not fully systematized by Brock and Thistlethwaite; and it leaves open the practical question of whether and how one can synergistically and liberatively appropriate traditions and symbols outside of and within one’s own tradition. Jung Ha Kim reflects, I am more churched than Christianized. Christianity, as a name of a religion, carries various connotations that are historically rooted as well as ‘‘dangerous memories’’ that are engraved in different people’s souls . . . . I learned early on what I needed to know about Christianity: that a religion

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for worshiping a Western god has no business being in Korea. My paternal grandmother who raised me in the Buddhist temple had said so; and I had no reason to question how she freely adapted a religion from India and China as her own and mix-matched it with other practices of indigenous Korean spirituality. Her devotions were sincere and her spiritual journey needed no formal explanations using Western rationality. Notions such as superstition, syncretism, and shamanism did not have much influence, if any, on her experiencing a holistic life that was deeply spiritual.46 I remember her as a devout Buddhist and, later on, as a sincere Christian. She was the one who taught me the ever fluid and complex nature of human life and how to allow and anticipate changes in life for both myself and others. She also demonstrated a viable way to live life as a woman in her own historical context. For these and other reasons I light candles and offer food and drink in memory of her as a small token of my deeply felt love and gratitude for her presence in my life. I do not perceive and experience these acts of libation and seeking guidance and strength from her (and from other ancestors) as a form of worship. For my own life testifies that ancestors are more than mere memories of the dead and that there exist clear links between and among the past, the present, and the future.47

While these fluid and blurred boundaries make synergism possible, they also make it difficult: the retrieval of ‘‘one’s own’’ indigenous symbols is not without problem, as contemporary indigenous peoples themselves can be coopted in the process of (re)claiming one’s ‘‘native roots’’ and constructing liberation theologies. I would therefore like to take the principle of synergism one step further. While the principle of synergism is helpful in articulating some of the power dynamics involved in the appropriation of religious symbols and practices from ‘‘outside’’ one’s ‘‘home’’ tradition, I would like to take this external principle and internalize it. That is, within Asian and Asian American religions and multiple religious practices, the principle of synergism can be used as an ‘‘internal’’ principle for understanding the power dynamics involved in multiple religious practices among Asian and Asian American communities. The hermeneutical key for flourishing can therefore be expanded, looking at liberation from multiple perspectives, prioritizing the marginalized among the marginalized and, in particular, indigenous and tribal communities in Asia. Thus tribal and indigenous women in Asia and Asian America must be privileged—even if they do not ‘‘belong’’ to one’s ‘‘own religion’’ or specific community. A wider view of ‘‘religion’’ in the interstices of multiple religious practice must also be attentive to the complicated power dynamics of a globalizing world.

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DIALOGUE AND PRAXIS IN THE INTERSTICES OF RELIGION Grace Ji-Sun Kim argues that syncretism as adaptation is a helpful way to understand the multireligous character of Korean and Korean North American contexts. The horizons of Shamanism, of Buddhism, and of Confucianism have not only changed and developed within themselves, but have also integrated with each other over many centuries to create a syncretic religio-cultural society. This adaptation does not mean that their specificities have disappeared, but that they have mutually influenced one another, and all play a key role among Korean people. This phenomenon of adaptation and borrowing continued when Christianity made its way into Korea.48

Syncretism is therefore a reality in Asian contexts and continues in Asian Pacific American practices. Christianity, which was syncretistic from its beginnings, continued (and continues) to develop in Asian and Asian Pacific American contexts through syncretistic adaptation.49 In constructing and reconstructing liberative practices for Asian North American women, then, syncretism is a natural part of the process. Kim’s use of adaptive syncretism is a helpful clarification of synergism. In this syncretism, one’s own world view and tradition is enriched in encounter with the ‘‘other.’’ She explains, [R]eligion is exposed to other religious expressions and assimilates them according to its own identity. This movement involves adaptation and reinterpretation so that one’s true religious identity is still preserved while genuinely learning from the other. This process is continuous as the religion continues to incarnate itself in different cultures . . . the insights of two or more religions are genuinely integrated without violence or loss of identity on either side.50

In the delicate process of syncretism of adaptation (synergism), one is changed through dialogue and practice with the ‘‘other.’’ This encounter implies a commitment to the ‘‘other,’’ in shifting one’s horizons without consuming the other’s world view and practices. This is what Ruben Habito calls for at the intersections of Supreme Ways, where there ‘‘is a stance of humble attentiveness willing to learn from the Other, to explore possible areas wherein one’s own Way may intersect and share common ground with that of an Other.’’51 In this encounter, deep and committed dialogue and practice in concrete, real relationships are a necessity. Engaging in multiple religious practices therefore requires a commitment to all communities of the interconnected webs of religious and cultural belongings.

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CONCLUDING REFLECTIONS The courageous task of religion in the interstices of Supreme Ways refuses to set up an arbitrary or relativistic notion of the divine in the world. Instead, the sacred as discovered within the spaces of multiple religious practices is an affirmation of religious commitment and of communities of belief. The affirmation of religious commitment nevertheless recognizes that a ‘‘pure’’ Christian religion is neither realistic nor is it relevant. To take the explicit stance between worlds as a ‘‘Christian’’ engaging multiple traditions—a stance that is exemplified by Christian Asian Pacific American women in their ambiguous, syncretistic rituals and dances—is to understand and respond to the risky, dangerous call of grace at the boundaries. And yet, responsibility to all communities of practice refuses to see religion as an endless buffet for individualistic consumption and actively resists the siren call of colonization, imperialism, and the erasure of religious communities. Multiple religious practice is deeply rewarding, but profoundly perilous. Unless one can strive in dialogue and relationship to be responsible to all religious communities of practice, multiple religious practice is bound to be a tool of the new colonialism. What this responsibility entails is a complicated question. It certainly requires a commitment to deep, interreligious learning and conversation. And just as there can be no dabbling in multiple religious practices, there can be no dabbling in interreligious dialogue and relationship. Through committed and concrete study, conversation, and even mutual practice, engagement in multiple religious practices can avoid some of the pitfalls of artificiality, individualism, and imperialism. At the same time, traditional notions of religious ‘‘belonging,’’ indeed of ‘‘religion’’ itself, are shown to break down in the face of this new understanding of religion in the interstices. As Asian Pacific American women are witness to the profoundly complex interweavings of Supreme Ways, the boundaries between ‘‘Christianity,’’ ‘‘Buddhism,’’ ‘‘Asian’’ and ‘‘American’’ are shifting boundaries that are drawn and redrawn in constant process. Religions are intersecting, overlapping, interrelated paths that diverge and converge in a myriad of ways. Thus, religious ‘‘belonging’’ is not always easy to assess. The ‘‘center’’ of a religion shifts, depending on the perspective evaluating it; and the ‘‘orthodox core’’ all too often obscures the ‘‘inside outsider’’ or ‘‘outside insider’’ underbelly of belief and practice. In committing to communities, then, we must be careful to engage traditions deeply, such that we can understand (or begin to understand) the complex dynamics of religion in the boundaries. In negotiating such fissures and intersections of Supreme Ways, beliefs and practices must be life-giving, must be ‘‘synergistic,’’ if multiple religious practice is to exemplify a model for a ‘‘new’’ way of religion, a model for

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religious practice in the twenty-first century. The hermeneutical key of Asian Pacific American women’s flourishing can therefore be expanded to be an explicit stance for all persons caught between worlds and a commitment to stand in solidarity with anyone—or anything—at the margins. Understood in this way, responsible multiple religious practice might mean stepping back from a particular space; responsible multiple religious practice might mean refusing to appropriate a particular symbol or engage in a particular cross-religious ritual. Whether it is out of a responsibility to one’s ‘‘home’’ community or out of a responsibility to one’s ‘‘extended’’ religious family, the interstices of religion sometimes suggest a gap that should be honored, a gap that should not, nor cannot (currently) be traversed. Honoring such spaces is a part of ‘‘integr(ity)ation,’’ a part of becoming more and more skillful in navigating Supreme Ways at these sacred intersections.

NOTES I would like to thank Jane Naomi Iwamura and James L. Fredericks for their helpful conversations in developing this chapter. 1. Rita Nakashima Brock, ‘‘Interstitial Integrity: Reflections toward an Asian American Woman’s Theology,’’ in Introduction to Christian Theology: Contemporary North American Perspectives, ed. Roger A. Badham (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 183–96. 2. Ibid., 184–85. 3. Grace Ji-Sun Kim, The Grace of Sophia: A Korean North American Women’s Christology (Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2002), vii. 4. Brock, ‘‘Interstitial Integrity: Reflections toward an Asian American Woman’s Theology,’’ 188. 5. Christie Heller de Leon, ‘‘Sticks, Stones and Stereotypes,’’ in More Than Serving Tea: Asian American Women on Expectations, Relationships, Leadership and Faith, ed. Nikki A. Toyama and Tracey Gee (Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2006), 19–35, 21–22. 6. Brock, ‘‘Interstitial Integrity: Reflections toward an Asian American Woman’s Theology,’’ 189. 7. Ibid., 190. 8. M. Elaine Mar, Paper Daughter: A Memoir (New York: Perennial, 1999), viii–ix. 9. Brock, ‘‘Interstitial Integrity: Reflections toward an Asian American Woman’s Theology,’’ 190. 10. Wendy Law-Yone, The Coffin Tree(Boston: Beacon Press, 1988). 11. Rita Nakashima Brock, ‘‘Interstitial Integrity: A Sermon,’’ Impact36 (1996): 46–52, 49–50.

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12. Brock, ‘‘Interstitial Integrity: Reflections toward an Asian American Woman’s Theology,’’ 191. 13. Maxine Hong Kingston, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts (New York: Vintage Books, 1989), 5–6. 14. Brock, ‘‘Interstitial Integrity: Reflections toward an Asian American Woman’s Theology,’’ 190. 15. Naomi Southard and Rita Nakashima Brock, ‘‘The Other Half of the Basket: Asian American Women and the Search for a Theological Home,’’ Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 3 (Fall 1987): 135–150, 135–138. 16. Ibid., 138. 17. Ibid., 149. 18. Brock defines thealogy as ‘‘the work of women reflecting on their experiences of and beliefs about divine reality.’’ Rita Nakashima Brock, ‘‘On Mirrors, Mists, Murmurs and the Way toward an Asian American Thealogy,’’ The Drew Gateway 58 (Spring 1989): 65–81, 65. 19. Ibid., 67 20. Ibid., 66. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid., 73 23. Ibid., 75. 24. Southard and Brock, ‘‘The Other Half of the Basket,’’ 135–50. 25. Brock, ‘‘On Mirrors, Mists, Murmurs and the Way toward an Asian American Thealogy,’’ 75–76. 26. Ibid., 77. 27. Ibid., 78. 28. Chung Hyun Kyung, Struggle to be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian Women’s Theology (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990), 113. 29. Grace Ji-Sun Kim, The Grace of Sophia, 39. 30. The material from this section is drawn from a panel presentation at Boston College (November 5, 2003) on ‘‘The Catholic Church and Other Living Faiths in Comparative Perspective.’’ 31. See Catherine Cornille, ed., Many Mansions? Multiple Religious Belonging and Christian Identity (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002); Peter C. Phan, ‘‘Multiple Religious Belonging: Opportunities and Challenges for Theology and Church,’’ Theological Studies 64, No. 3 (2003): 495–519; Catherine Cornille, ‘‘Double Religious Belonging: Aspects and Questions,’’ Buddhist-Christian Studies 23 (2003): 43–49. 32. See Thomas J. Douglas, ‘‘The Cross and the Lotus: Changing Religious Practices among Cambodian Immigrants in Seattle,’’ in Revealing the Sacred in Asian & Pacific America, ed. Jane Naomi Iwamura and Paul Spickard (New York: Routledge, 2003), 159–75.

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33. See Su Yon Pak, Unzu Lee, Jung Ha Kim, and Myung Ji Cho, Singing the Lord’s Song in a New Land: Korean American Practices of Faith (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005). 34. Ruben Habito, ‘‘Japanese Buddhist Perspectives and Comparative Theology: Supreme Ways in Intersection,’’ Theological Studies 64, No. 2 (June 2003): 362–87, 387. 35. Austin Flannery, ed., ‘‘Declaration on the Relation of the Church to Non-Christian Religions,’’ in Vatican Council II: Constitutions, Decrees, Declarations (Vatican II) (Northport: Costello Publishing Company, 1996), 570–71. 36. Habito, ‘‘Japanese Buddhist Perspectives,’’ 386. 37. Ibid., 385. 38. Ibid. 39. Chung, Struggle to be the Sun Again, 113. 40. Kirsteen Kim, ‘‘Spirit and ‘Spirits’ at the Canberra Assembly of the World Council of Churches,’’ Missiology 32, No. 3 (July 2004): 349–65, 349–50. 41. http://www.cta-usa.org/foundationdocs/foundhyunkyung.html. See Chung Hyun Kyung, ‘‘Come, Holy Spirit—Renew the Whole Creation,’’ in Signs of the Spirit: Official Report of the Seventh Assembly of the WCC, Canberra, 1991 (Geneva: WCC, 1991), 37–47; Chung Hyun Kyung, ‘‘Welcome the Spirit, Hear Her Cries,’’ Christianity and Crisis 51 (July 15, 1991): 219–32. 42. Choi Hee An, Korean Women and God: Experiencing God in a Multireligious Colonial Context (Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005), 16–18. 43. Kirsteen Kim, ‘‘Spirit and ‘Spirits’ at the Canberra Assembly,’’ 350–51. See also ‘‘Survival-Syncretist,’’ Christian Century 109 (March 11, 1992): 272. 44. See Letty M. Russell, Church in the Round: Feminist Interpretation of the Church (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1993), 68. 45. Rita Nakashima Brock and Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 213–14. 46. Jung Ha Kim, ‘‘’But Who Do You Say That I Am?’’ (Matt 16:15): A Churched Korean American Woman’s Autobiographical Inquiry,’’ in Journeys at the Margin: Toward an Autobiographical Theology in American-Asian Perspective, ed. Peter C. Phan and Jung Young Lee (Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1999), 103—12, 105–6. 47. Ibid., 108. 48. Grace Ji-Sun Kim, The Grace of Sophia, 38. 49. Ibid., 34–39. 50. Ibid., 27. 51. Habito, ‘‘Japanese Buddhist Perspectives,’’386.

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BIBLIOGRAPHY Brock, Rita Nakashima. ‘‘Interstitial Integrity: Reflections toward an Asian American Woman’s Theology.’’ In Introduction to Christian Theology: Contemporary North American Perspectives, edited by Roger A. Badham, 183–96. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998. . ‘‘Interstitial Integrity: A Sermon.’’ Impact 36 (1996): 46–52. . ‘‘On Mirrors, Mists, Murmurs and the Way toward an Asian American Thealogy.’’ The Drew Gateway 58 (Spring 1989): 65–81. Brock, Rita Nakashima, and Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite. Casting Stones: Prostitution and Liberation in Asia and the United States. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996. Choi Hee An. Korean Women and God: Experiencing God in a Multi-religious Colonial Context. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2005. Chung Hyun Kyung. ‘‘Come, Holy Spirit—Renew the Whole Creation.’’ In Signs of the Spirit: Official Report of the Seventh Assembly of the WCC, Canberra, 1991, 37–47. Geneva: WCC, 1991. . Struggle to Be the Sun Again: Introducing Asian Women’s Theology. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 1990. Cornille, Catherine, ed. Many Mansions? Multiple Religious Belonging and Christian Identity. Maryknoll: Orbis Books, 2002. Iwamura, Jane Naomi, and Paul Spickard, eds. Revealing the Sacred in Asian & Pacific America. New York: Routledge, 2003. Kim, Grace Ji-Sun. The Grace of Sophia: A Korean North American Women’s Christology. Cleveland: The Pilgrim Press, 2002. Pak, Su Yon, Unzu Lee, Jung Ha Kim and Myung Ji Cho. Singing the Lord’s Song in a New Land: Korean American Practices of Faith. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005. Phan, Peter C., and Jung Young Lee, eds. Journeys at the Margin: Toward an Autobiographical Theology in American-Asian Perspective. Collegeville: The Liturgical Press, 1999. Southard, Naomi, and Rita Nakashima Brock. ‘‘The Other Half of the Basket: Asian American Women and the Search for a Theological Home.’’ Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion 3 (Fall 1987): 135–50. Toyama, Nikki A., and Tracey Gee, eds.More Than Serving Tea: Asian American Women on Expectations, Relationships, Leadership and Faith. Downers Grove: IVP Books, 2006.

CHAPTER

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Diana’s Grove: An Emergent, Integrative Spiritual Movement Susan E. Hill, John K. Simmons, and Cynthea Jones

Our spiritual practice is dedicated to developing healthy communities and relationships. Magic, for us, is aligning ourselves with life-sustaining practices so we can invoke within ourselves the ability to act according to our deepest values and live our dreams into reality. —Cynthea Jones

I

n February 1993, Cynthea Jones and Patricia Storm attended an intensive weekend in Chicago with Starhawk, one of the leading spokespersons on neopagan movements.1 During a session led by Starhawk, the two women were asked to envision their shared spiritual dream in the future. Neither of them found themselves in Springfield, IL, teaching in a brick center on a corner lot. Instead, they were in a magical grove, surrounded by gently rising hills and woods with firelight dancing on the faces of persons they had yet to meet.2 Soon after, Cynthea and Patricia began a search for what was to become Diana’s Grove, a 102-acre retreat center, located in Missouri at the foothills of the Ozarks. As the opening quote suggests, the purpose of the programs at Diana’s Grove is to provide a space for the expression of Earth-based spiritual beliefs and to offer instruction in leadership development, with the goal of creating an intentional community where spiritual practice engages and enacts the values of inclusion, healthy group process, and shared power. In working toward this goal, the leaders and participants at Diana’s Grove represent the qualities of what we see as an

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emergent, integrative spiritual movement that offers an alternative to traditional, hierarchical, dogmatic forms of religious expression. The characteristics of integrative spiritual movements are: • the promotion of an inclusive, spiritual world view and practice that values the connections between the domains of mind, spirit, emotion and body • the reclaiming of nature and the natural in each of these domains • the cultivation of wonder and recognition of the magical and mysterious in life • a focus on personal spiritual growth and societal transformation

In this chapter, then, we explore the ways in which Diana’s Grove exemplifies an integrative spiritual movement that illustrates alternative ways in which women, in particular, express their world view and practices. To provide a context for this exploration, we begin with a description of the spiritual practice and the people of Diana’s Grove.

WHAT HAPPENS AT DIANA’S GROVE? It’s a warm night in May, and the sun is just going down. The moon and her bright friend Venus rise above the hills as the group of 30 women and men walk in silence to the Water Path for the evening’s ritual. The group has gathered from all over the United States to live together in community, focusing on personal growth and leadership development in large and small groups, for a week. Learning sessions in the great room of the main house are intermingled with fabulous meals, free time to wander the land, shop in the camp store, walk the labyrinth, relax in the hot tub, chat, or nap. Some participants already know one another upon arrival; many do not, but it’s hard not to feel welcome and embraced by this group of people so committed to openness and inclusion. As the group assembles around the fire, some standing, some sitting, two members of the community step into the center of the circle to gather the group together with sound and movement. Some voices are calm, toning one note; others mimic the buzzing sounds of nature, or the call of the whippoorwill. Some stand in place or remain seated, some move around the circle. Together, the group begins to come together, in nature, for a sacred ritual. Once the Gathering is complete, other community members step in to ground the participants in this moment, to leave the day’s work, conversations, or tensions behind, to focus on what is happening here, now, around us and inside us. The circle is cast, the presence of the elements of air, fire, water, earth, and center are acknowledged by the community, the invocations

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led by still other community members, assisted by the entire group. A particular goddess or god is called to assist with the ritual’s work. In this process, members of the community act as ‘‘priestesses,’’ a term which, at Diana’s Grove is inclusive of both women and men, and in ritual, we are all priestesses, everyone an integral part of the experience. That is not to say that everyone knows exactly what will happen; only a few are privy to the entirety of the evening’s ritual plan. Leaders of various aspects of the ritual know the intention of tonight’s work, necessary equipment has been gathered, a fire built, but what the ritual turns out to be depends on the alchemy of the plan, the energy of the participants, and the demands of nature. During the day, we worked to create a vision of the future self each of us wants to become; tonight’s ritual will lay a pattern in each of our souls to guide us to that becoming. After the invocations, Cynthea and Patricia step into the center, invite us to sit or stand, and get comfortable. Cynthea begins talking, slowly, powerfully, about the possibility of claiming the potential of the future self. Patricia drums quietly on the frame drum, creating a hypnotic rhythm; both of them speak, sometimes apart from one another, sometimes at the same time. This is the part of the ritual known as the trance; it is a tool that allows participants to ignore the constant little voices in our heads (it’s hard to listen to two people talking at once!), to get in touch with our unconscious desires, our unconscious dreams for the future. Distract the conscious mind, and the unconscious mind can do the work. After the trance is complete, we move together to the creek. At the creek’s entrance each of us receives a candle that is then lit and placed on a thin piece of wood; we walk into the shallow creek, or stand on the shore, holding our lighted candles, our future selves. As we release our future selves to the waters of life, we sing together a chant we have learned earlier in the day: ‘‘I am flowing, shifting, changing, moving beyond the edge of form . . . .’’ We watch the candles flow down the creek, and sing for awhile; then we leave the water, return to a roaring fire, acknowledge the elements, open the circle. After ritual, some stay and sit quietly around the fire; others walk back to the barn by moonlight and torchlight, and the blinking of the fireflies. Back in the barn, we eat dessert and laugh and talk about the day. Some stay up late, drumming, dancing, and singing, while others fall exhausted into bed after a full day. This is a description of a typical ritual at Diana’s Grove. The ritual has a pattern, with various parts, organized into a coherent whole, like the rituals found in many other religious traditions. The focus on the four elements of nature—air, fire, water, and earth—and the invocation of goddesses and/or gods, however, points to the fact that Diana’s Grove works out of an earthbased or earth-centered spiritual tradition. Such traditions are commonly

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called pagan, neopagan, or wiccan, and come with negative cultural associations of witches who ride on brooms or people linked to satanic cults. Yet, such stereotypes do not describe the focus of most earth-based spiritual traditions. Using the word ‘‘witchcraft’’ as an umbrella term to describe such traditions, Starhawk writes, ‘‘witchcraft is a religion, perhaps the oldest religion extant in the West. Its origins go back before Christianity, Judaism, Islam—before Buddhism and Hinduism, as well, and it is very different from all the so-called great religions.3 Indeed, the negative connotations of the word ‘‘pagan’’ go back to ancient struggles between the older polytheistic religions and the newer monotheistic traditions, primarily Christianity, that became dominant in the early centuries of the Common Era in the West. We can see these struggles in the transformation of the meaning of the Latin word ‘‘paganus,’’ which originally meant ‘‘country dweller.’’ As Christianity spread through the cities of the Roman Empire, people who lived in the country continued to practice their traditional religions, and were often the last people to be converted to the new religion; hence, ‘‘pagan’’ came to refer not simply to country dweller, but to those who were godless, or unbelievers.4 Instead of thinking of those who did not convert to Christianity as people practicing a different spiritual tradition, pagans were denigrated and feared. Polytheistic traditions that celebrated both the male and feminine divine were replaced by a monotheistic tradition that focused on the importance of a singular, male God, and religious leadership became the sole responsibility of men. Contemporary pagan movements that attempt to reclaim these ancient polytheistic traditions often do so in order to revalue the feminine divine alongside the male divine, and emphasize the importance of women as religious leaders. The Reclaiming movement, a feminist group founded by Starhawk and Diane Baker in 1979, turned to pagan traditions ‘‘in order to heal experiences of estrangement occasioned by patriarchal biblical religions.’’5 Along with its focus on women’s spiritual experience, Starhawk emphasizes that witchcraft or paganism ‘‘is not based on dogma or a set of beliefs, nor on scriptures or a sacred book revealed by a great man. Witchcraft takes its teachings from nature, and reads inspiration in the movements of the sun, moon and stars, the flight of birds, the slow growth of trees, and the cycles of the seasons.6 The spiritual practice of Diana’s Grove is, as Starhawk describes above, not based on dogma or scripture; rather it is based on the cycles of nature, on the ebb and flow of the seasons, on the cycles of birth and growth, decay and death found in nature. Diana’s Grove values the feminine and the masculine divine in many different forms that often refer back to Greek mythology, like Demeter and Persephone or Pan and Hades, each representing actual states of nature and psychological states of being. For instance,

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the Greek myth of Persephone explains how the natural cycles of spring and summer, fall and winter came to be, but the myth can also help us explore common human experiences of joy and productivity, sorrow and loss. Earth-based spiritual traditions, like that practiced at Diana’s Grove, see nature as a valuable spiritual teacher. In addition, an important part of the work of Diana’s Grove is to develop skilled and professional leaders who understand group process and facilitation. Finally, as Eugene Gallagher points out, organizations like Diana’s Grove that can be described under the heading ‘‘neopaganism’’ are incredibly diverse, improvisational, and are nonauthoritarian and nondogmatic.7 This is a world view that attempts to avoid categorization and labels, a stance that resonates with the leadership of Diana’s Grove.

THE PEOPLE OF DIANA’S GROVE So, who are the people who participate in Diana’s Grove programs? The bulk of the work of Diana’s Grove is focused on Mystery School, the focus and intention of which is ‘‘self-realization, self-actualization . . . in the context of building relationships and sharing your life with others.’’ 8 The 2007 promotional brochure describes Mystery School this way: What are the Mysteries? Birth, growth, life, death, love, passion, divinity . . . . The Mysteries are all things that, even when explained, can never be consigned to reason. They are moments of transcendent awe when we are touched by the divine and discover ourselves to be one with the world . . . . Mystery school is a year of myth, magic and community. Personal growth, professional development, the art of creating healthy communities; that is what a Mystery School year offers you.

Monthly Mystery School retreat weekends are supplemented by online discussion lists and classes that usually center on a myth or a story told for the entire year. Many of these myths are Greek, like the myth of Demeter and Persephone, or the Labyrinth and the Minotaur, though Mystery School has also focused on the legends of King Arthur, and the Scottish ‘‘Ballad of Tam Lin.’’ Each month, Cynthea, (sometimes along with other staff members), takes a piece of the story and illuminates its meaning in the contemporary world.9 Mystery School began in 1995 with 22 participants; in 2008 more than 225 people are in Mystery School. Most of the members of Mystery School range in age from mid-twenties to mid-sixties, and most are Caucasian. There are lesbians and gay men, heterosexuals, and bisexuals. They come from a variety of traditional religious backgrounds, including Catholicism,

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Mormonism, Unitarian Universalism, and a variety of other Protestant sects. Jews, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, and Christian pagans find their way to Diana’s Grove. Many of the participants are college-educated and some have Masters degrees and Ph.D.s. There are teachers and college professors, counselors and therapists, corporate trainers, computer information specialists, artists, stay-at-home parents, massage therapists, writers and editors, retail sales associates, engineers, construction workers, small business owners, health care workers, and students.

WOMEN’S PERSPECTIVES ON DIANA’S GROVE The vast majority of Mystery School participants and Diana’s Grove staff are women, though Diana’s Grove is not a women-only organization. Yet, Diana’s Grove does have a particular appeal for women, for a number of different reasons. It is a place of physical and emotional safety, a place that accepts the variety of beliefs and practices of its participants, a place of healing and personal growth, and a place where women’s opinions, skills, talents, intellectual capabilities, and leadership abilities are valued and celebrated. There are two women-only events every year at Diana’s Grove— Women’s Spring Equinox and Lunacy Women’s Week. When Diana’s Grove first opened, Cynthea and Patricia wanted to offer events for women only because, as many women who attend these events confirm, the energy of a group of women together is different than when there are men in the group. Women-only events continue to be offered because they create an alternative space for women, where the focus is solely on themselves, not on their spouses, children, parents, friends, or jobs. Cynthea maintains that women-only events create opportunity for a special kind of intimacy and relaxation, where women can step away from societal expectations that they tend first to others, and not to themselves. For some of the Grove’s regular attendees, these are favorite events. Susan describes the importance of the women-only events for her in this way: As a child growing up in Utah, I was part of a very close spiritual community. In my early 30s, I left my childhood religion to follow my longing, a deep longing within my heart to find a community centered in female spirituality. My longing led me to discover Diana’s Grove Women’s Spring Equinox Celebration in March of 1997. Diana’s Grove has become my spiritual home. A community in which to share the sacred, to sing and chant together, to share sacred ritual, to laugh and cry together, to walk this sacred land . . . to honor both mine and your place in this sacred web of life.

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Susan’s experience of Women’s Spring Equinox led her to become a member of the Diana’s Grove community. There have periodically been questions from men involved in the community about how an organization that claims to be inclusive could have events for women only. Yet, Cynthea maintains that Diana’s Grove can be ‘‘inclusive and non-sexist and still offer events for individuals.’’ As with all of the other events at Diana’s Grove, participants make choices about whether they attend, so women who do not want to attend women-only events are certainly not required to do so. And, there have also been menonly events at the Grove when there has been interest, so there is a recognition that men, too, may desire to have space where they can spend time focusing on themselves and not their spouses, children, parents, friends, and jobs. Most events at Diana’s Grove, however, are open to both men and women. Yet, what happens at Diana’s Grove has, as far as numbers of participants goes, appealed far more strongly to women than to men. One reason for this is that Diana’s Grove is a place of physical safety. Tucked in the Ozarks, far away from any large cities, women can walk the land at all times of day or night without fear for their personal safety. While physical safety is important to everyone, it is especially important for women, who in the course of daily life may spend more time than most men focused on bodily self-protection. While the remote location of Diana’s Grove offers participants physical safety, emotional safety is perhaps even more important to the women who come to the Grove. Over and over again, women like Amy, who come often to Diana’s Grove do so because, ‘‘in the safe container of the Mystery School community I can try on new ways of being that are more authentically me.’’ Sue says that ‘‘the Grove is a place of comfort and safety where each individual’s talents and abilities are fostered and appreciated, where personal quirks are amusingly accepted, and where working through the inevitable community tensions is a sacred duty.’’ Jo says that the personal work that she does at the Grove happens in an environment that encourages and supports a very open spirit, one where it becomes unusually safe to wrestle with therapeutic personal issues. Grove rituals ask us to consider universals like ‘‘loss,’’ leaving it to each individual to decide whether that references a death, a broken relationship, a dream that died, or whatever else speaks to their lives in that moment. This personalizes each ritual, even as we weep and vow to go on in community. And other daily non-ritual events, like circles of support and post-ritual dessert, provide a way for me to ease back from those intimately vulnerable places in a useful, responsible way.

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The kind of emotional safety that women experience at Diana’s Grove allows them to focus on spiritual growth in a way that allows them to feel safe while working on challenging emotional issues. Another reason for the Grove’s appeal to women is that it offers opportunities for leadership development and empowerment in ritual and community contexts that other religious organizations often do not. At Diana’s Grove, for instance, the word ‘‘priestess’’ is an inclusive term for both women and men, and in ritual, we are all priestesses, everyone an integral part of the experience. Rare is the case outside the Grove where a word associated with women is made applicable to both women and men; usually those words believed to be inclusive, like ‘‘mankind’’ for instance, put men first. This conceptual shift denotes a world view that values women and their skills in a context of cooperation and empowerment for all members of the group. While training in these skills is open to all members of Mystery School, women may feel especially validated and valued for their abilities and appreciate the chance to make mistakes, learn from them, and still remain valued community members. Indeed, the opportunity for leadership development is crucial for many of the women who participate in the community at Diana’s Grove. Leadership development happens in a context that values the integration of mind, spirit, emotion, and body, and thus stands in contrast to many established religious systems in the West, where mind and spirit have been seen as opposites, never to be reconciled. Moreover, throughout Western history, women have most often been defined in terms of their procreative, bodily functions, while men have been identified with spirit and intellect.10 One effect of such identifications is that women have been shut out of important leadership roles in church communities, a situation that has only been reconciled in some Western religious traditions in the last 200 years. Another effect has been a consistent conceptual privileging of the spirit over the body, a notion that excludes a holistic perspective on human life in which sexuality, spirituality, emotional expression, and intellect are seen as harmonious aspects of human existence. At Diana’s Grove, becoming a good leader requires attention to all aspects of human existence. As Shauna puts it, The deep work at Diana’s Grove has changed me personally, professionally, and spiritually. I remember one workshop in particular, Embodying Psyche, where a circle of women met to discuss our issues around our bodies and how the words of others had shaped how we saw our bodies, as well as how this impacted our sense of self. Sharing my pain, and releasing some of it, helped me to become stronger and healthier, but I was amazed at how these old pains and old stories of myself and who I was helped me to become a stronger leader. Diana’s Grove helped me

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to step out of old patterns that did not serve me, and into new patterns of greater success, through embodied, experiential work in ritual, the rituals of being witnessed in group conversation, and other processes.

This kind of integrative spiritual practice has also been helpful to Shaun. She describes her experience of Diana’s Grove in this way: I came to Diana’s Grove for a friend whom I thought could benefit from the personal healing work it offered. The friend came once, and six years later, I am on the Grove staff. The community has given me the ability to communicate effectively and honestly—as a storyteller, a teacher, a workshop presenter—and most importantly, as a healthy human being. I want to be present to this world in this my one life—and I can be with the skills I have learned here.

These testimonials that what happens at Diana’s Grove creates opportunities for personal growth and leadership development suggest the importance of integrating mind, spirit, emotion, and body when doing such work. As a place that provides physical and emotional safety, that is a place of healing, Diana’s Grove allows individuals to work on personal growth and leadership development. It creates opportunities for all of the members of its community, while offering women opportunities that they may not so easily find in other spiritual traditions.

DIANA’S GROVE AS INTEGRATIVE SPIRITUAL MOVEMENT In the introduction, we proposed the following as characteristics of an integrative spiritual movement: • the promotion of an inclusive, spiritual world view and practice that values the connections between the domains of mind, spirit, emotion and body • the reclaiming of nature and the natural in each of these domains • the cultivation of wonder and recognition of the magical and mysterious in life • a focus on personal spiritual growth and societal transformation

In this section, we focus on two examples that show how these characteristics are put into play at Diana’s Grove. The first example centers on the idea that the ‘‘focus on the world of nature [is] a way to focus on the nature of the world.’’11 Specifically, we examine the ways in which Diana’s Grove uses the four elements of air, fire, water, and earth to expand our awareness

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of the world around us in ritual, to enhance self-understanding, and to develop leadership skills. The second example focuses on the idea of individual and communal transformation using magic, ritual, and mythology as the people at Diana’s Grove understand them.

THE FOUR ELEMENTS: NATURE, HUMANS, LEADERSHIP The four elements of air, fire, water, and earth play an important role at Diana’s Grove not only because of the focus on earth-based spirituality, but because the elements can be used as conceptual tools to increase psychological self-awareness and work on leadership skills. The Diana’s Grove Web site explains the importance of understanding the multilayered meaning of the elements in this way: Do we worship the earth? Not necessarily, but we believe that any sustainable spiritual philosophy must include respect for life. It must encourage us to develop practices that enable us to live in a respectful relationship with the world that sustains us. Our approach to our spiritual work and to ritual is earth-based rather than humanistic. We look at the elements—air, fire, water and earth—as if their primary gift is to invite us to be aware of the world around us, rather than to provide us with metaphorical keys to the world within us. Yes, the elements give us clues to our ‘‘elemental’’ nature, they are associated with aspects of our humanness. Yes, the world around us does give us clues to the world within us, but with the blessing of sacred land and abundant nature, we focus on the world of nature as a way to understand the nature of the world. The elements invite us to deepen our connection with nature.12

Here we see again the effort to integrate mind, spirit, emotion, and body in the context of defining earth-centered spirituality. For the Diana’s Grove community, earth-centered spirituality provides the tools for strengthening our connections to ourselves, to one another, and to the world around us.

THE PHYSICAL WORLD As an earth-based spiritual tradition, one of the most crucial beliefs at Diana’s Grove is that humans must learn to live more harmoniously with the natural world. Images of colorfully clad people cavorting in a green meadow adorn the publicity materials put out by Diana’s Grove, but a more serious question arises: What is ‘‘nature?’’ What do we mean when we speak

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of being ‘‘natural?’’ There is, of course, the literal sense of the word ‘‘nature,’’ the fact that when people go to Diana’s Grove, nature is everywhere. If we pay attention to the elements, we become more aware of the world around us, and can better understand the ways in which we, as humans, are a part of nature. The elements are honored at the beginning of each ritual and create a context for spiritual work. Each of the elements is associated with a direction: air is associated with the east, fire with the south, water with the west, and earth with the north.13 These directional connections draw attention to nature as a whole, as well as emphasize the cyclical character of nature and the links between each of the elements. Highlighting each of the elements may seem a bit obvious, and ordinary, but focusing on the elements allows us to realize the importance of the obvious. What happens when we actually pay attention to our breathing, to the breeze on our skin, the buzz of the insects, or the flight of the bird? Focusing on all of their natural manifestations can give us insight into and appreciation for the authentic significance of the elements in our lives. Fire is a hot summer day, a warm bonfire on a cold night; fire is candle flame and volcanic eruption. Water is a soft summer rain, a gently rolling river, floods, glaciers, snow. Earth is the ground upon which we walk, caves and fields, mountains and valleys, earthquakes and mudslides. All of the elements are necessary for human life; all of the elements are powerful enough to take human life. In honoring and respecting the forces of nature, we can understand the sacredness of the world around us. In a world that is increasingly subject to the human exploitation of natural resources, refocusing our attention to the value of the world around us can encourage us to live more harmoniously with our environment.

THE ELEMENTS AND THE HUMAN PSYCHE Yet, nature is not simply trees, plants, and animals. Nature beckons us to join in identity with its otherness. Like everything in life, becoming a part of is only achieved by overcoming selfishness and finding commonality and resonance with ‘‘the other.’’ To love nature is to find oneness with nature. Therefore, our ‘‘problems’’ with nature are fundamentally spiritual problems. From this perspective, ecological awareness is a powerful indicator of a transformation in human consciousness that is necessary if we are to change our behavior towards nature and each other. Interestingly enough, the Greek root of the word ‘‘ecology’’ is oikos, which means ‘‘home.’’ The psychologist Thomas Moore writes, ecology is not earth science, it is home science; it has to do with cultivating a sense of home wherever we are, in whatever context. The things of the world are part of our home environment, and so a soulful ecology is rooted

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in the feeling that this world is our home and that our responsibility to it comes not from obligation or logic but from true affection.14

From this perspective, our affection for nature should have a transformative effect; it should not only help us take care of the earth itself, it should lead us to greater self-awareness. Believing this to be the case, Diana’s Grove uses the elements to enhance participants’ awareness of themselves so that they can create healthy communities. In this context, air is associated with conversations, mental processes, and learning. Fire is associated with passion, courage, and creativity; water with emotion, love, and nurturance. The earth is seen as hearth and home, manifestation, the body, birth and death. Each of these elements, then, makes up a part of human life and human interaction. To experience the elements in human life, every year members of Mystery School can choose to focus on one of the elements. This dedication to an element is a way to intensify one’s personal practice by devoting specific attention to the role of a particular element in one’s life. For instance, if I want to improve my relationships by being more attuned to my feelings, I might dedicate myself to water. As Laurie writes about a water dedication, ‘‘water fits any container without losing its integrity. And water rules where it has no container at all, flooding and bringing fertility to the land it temporarily destroys, shaping the earth as it goes. What do we learn about emotions when we notice the power and flexibility of water?’’ As this example shows, thinking about the ways that the elements can help us understand human life allows us to become more at home in the natural world of which we— and the others with whom we live in community—are a part.

LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT: THE ELEMENTS IN COMMUNICATION In addition to developing greater self-awareness by focusing on the elements, one can use the elements to enhance leadership skills. For nature, a revealing definition is:‘‘the essential characteristics and qualities of a person or thing.’’ Definitions for natural include ‘‘having an essential relationship with someone or something.’’ So, when we speak of nature, we are referring to identity, those essential characteristics that make something or someone what they are; and natural configures relationship, our fundamental human activity, relating to the environment, the world around us. David Abram, in his book The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More Than Human World, opens with a powerful quote about human relationships. In the first lines of the preface, he writes, Humans are tuned for relationship. The eyes, the skin, the tongue, ears, and nostrils—all are gates where our body receives the nourishment of

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otherness . . . . For the largest part of our species’ existence, humans have negotiated relationship with every aspect of the sensuous surrounds, exchanging possibilities with every flapping form, with each textured surface and shivering entity that we happened to focus upon. All could speak . . . to which we replied . . . . And from all of these relationships our collective sensibilities were nourished.15

Nature is everything with which we have relationship; it is the quest for knowing thyself, the necessary component; nature is environment; nature requires communication. Because of this, the elements can be used to teach leadership skills. One specific focus in this context is using the four elements to understand how and why we communicate. For instance, when I speak from the element of air, for instance, I speak in order to give information. Communicating information can be both positive and negative, for when we communicate from air, we can both provide and withhold information. Air communication can thus reveal a certain kind of power dynamic found in communication. If I speak from the element of fire, I speak to establish my identity. Speaking from fire, I can tell you what I believe and what I’ve accomplished. I can also be boastful and arrogant. If I speak from the element of water, I am communicating to express emotion. This kind of conversation can build bridges between people and invoke intimacy. It can also create more emotional distance, if I’m not careful. Earth is the place of silence in communication. The silence that earthy communication provides can allow others to speak. It can also be punishing if I withhold information or exclude others through my silence. To think about communication in this way requires that I think about my intentions for speaking. Am I trying to communicate information? Am I trying to allow space for others to speak? Am I trying to tell you how I feel? Are my intentions appropriate for the situation? Am I using the appropriate method of communication for the situation at hand? Mystery School participant, Amy, reflected online about her awareness of the ways in which this model reflects her communication skills: Through this model I’m learning to pay attention to what my intention is when I speak. Is what I’m saying serving my intention? Am I speaking just to hear myself talk? Is what I’m sharing relevant? I tried paying attention to which element I was speaking from at a given time. I find I speak from air a lot. Trying to share or gather information. For me this can slide into bossiness and trying to tell others how to do something, even if my opinion is not asked for. Maybe that is a blend of fire and air? Sharing what I know to establish my identity as someone who is intelligent? Hmmm, something to ponder.

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As Amy suggests, recognition of one’s own communication styles can lead to selfawareness and the possibility of improving communication with others in our daily lives, thus enhancing our spiritual connections with the world around us. These examples of the use of the elements in ritual, in understanding the human psyche and social interactions, and in learning to communicate skillfully, reaffirm Diana’s Grove’s holistic approach to spirituality and its role in human life. Being attentive to the sacredness of nature enhances awareness of the world around us. That recognition, in turn, can lead us to insights about ourselves, our place in nature, and how we deal with others. The use of the elements in all of these ways thus exemplifies the four aspects of the integrative spiritual movement: an inclusive spiritual world that integrates mind (air), spirit (fire), emotion (water), and body (earth) through a recognition of nature and the natural, the cultivation of a sense of wonder about the world around us and the spheres of personal interaction, and a focus on personal spiritual transformation through a deeper engagement of the levels of meaning that the natural elements provide.

MAGIC, MYTHOLOGY, RITUAL, AND TRANSFORMATION While the elements provide layers of meaning with which to grasp the connections between the natural and human worlds, another way of understanding the work of Diana’s Grove is to see the connections between spiritual practice and individual and communal transformation, as they are found in mythology, magic, and ritual. The Diana’s Grove Web site explains its perspective on magic in this way: Dion Fortune defined Magic as the art of changing consciousness at will. We agree with that definition and, to it, we add: the only consciousness that any of us can truly change is our own (emphasis added). What do we change from? What do we change into? We change from who we were told we were and who we were told we should be into the self we choose to be. The work that we offer at Diana’s Grove is based on our belief in the spiraling process of self-discovery and self-creation. That process can be called individuation.

Diana’s Grove’s definition of magic provides a significantly different approach to the idea of magic than the stereotypical notion of magic using spells, potions, and mystical manipulations of the world around us. Indeed, magic at Diana’s Grove is not about the manipulation of people and the world around us; rather, it is about self-transformation. The art of magic, then, is the art of becoming an individual. As the Web site puts it:

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Individuation, becoming an individual—there are natural steps in the process of becoming.There are natural steps that lead us into being more fully who we are. Self-awareness, self-honesty, clear communication, self-responsibility, realizing that we have an impact on each other and being willing to be aware of that impact, accepting the challenge to become who we choose to be: these are the aspects of personal growth that are essential to the magical work at Diana’s Grove. As we become more fully who we are, we move beyond ourselves into a relationship with a greater whole. That whole might be a community. It might be a political movement. It might be an experience of transcendence, of opening to the mysteries of wonder. As each of us becomes more fully who we are, the world around us and within us is richer. That is the work we do at Diana’s Grove. The philosophy is that, by becoming who we are, who we choose to be, we will change the world . . . one person at time.16

Magic, then, is about changing one’s self-consciousness, one’s approach to the people and the world around us. Creating magic requires that we see the world in a new way, as happens when we use the elements to investigate multiple layers of human experience. Another way is through the use of mythology. Each year’s Mystery School explores a myth or folktale in depth; as the Web site says, ‘‘live a myth as a year-long adventure in personal growth.’’17 Each month, participants can download a packet of materials on a different part of the story that raise issues about choices made, challenges met, ethical dilemmas faced. Monthly workbooks give participants the opportunity to work on similar issues in their own lives through journaling, creative art projects, or meditative exercises. In this way, mythology comes to life, for us, here and now. Cynthea explains the way that Diana’s Grove uses myth in the following way: ‘‘Facts don’t change people, stories do.’’ A member of the Mystery School community jotted this line down on her way home from the Grove. She heard it in an NPR interview. I made note of it without writing down the name of the speaker. I share it with an apology to the speaker. Truth, like myth, doesn’t require the author’s credentials to validate its authenticity. Howard Sasportas said ‘‘A myth is a story that has never happened and is always happening.’’ A myth is a story told by a culture. It is a story told by a generation or for generations. The myths we tell in Mystery School aren’t our stories. They don’t come from our culture. They don’t come from our time. They don’t dwell in our landscape, and yet, they do. Joseph Campbell said, ‘‘remnants of the Greek myths line the wall of our interior system of belief, like shards of broken pottery in an archaeological site.’’

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These stories live deep inside us. We need to retell them because a forgotten place in us that never forgets believes them. We need to rehear the old stories. We need to hear them again and hear them differently. We need to find new conclusions, ones that support life and growth. We need to grab the thread and travel the maze. And when we do, we can place a different possibility at every turn.

Telling ancient stories helps us make a connection to a past that is always already with us, embedded in our culture. The stories that are used at Diana’s Grove would not be considered sacred texts in the context of monotheistic religious traditions, for they are not believed to be of divine origin or inspiration, but like the texts of those traditions, these stories stand as important touchstones of belief. These texts reflect universal human experiences that continue to be relevant today. As Cynthea puts it, Mythology is a word that we apply to past religions and past truths but not to present ones. In common language, it applies to other people’s gods but not our own. At Diana’s Grove, myth doesn’t mean fiction; it refers to a larger-than-life truth. Myths are the great stories we live by, even if we haven’t heard them. They create the archetypes and the patterns that we embrace as the blueprint for how things are, for who we really are. Archetype means original pattern. Myth is the home of the archetypes. Myths give the archetypes a place to live, rooms to walk through, a closet full of cultures to dress in, a variety of personal histories and personalities to use as decoration. Myths give the archetypes daily life dramas and interactions—a hall of mirrors that lets us see them and lets them see themselves. The archetypes—the gods, goddesses and the mortals who live in myth—are the keepers of the blueprints that tell us about life. Myths let us peek into our own psyche and walk around in the subconscious of the collective mind. They let us interact with beliefs that we didn’t know we had. They tell us about the nature of nature and about the secret life of divinity. If we are going to enter the subconscious of the collective mind of our culture, then I say, let’s rearrange the furniture. Let’s make some changes while we are there. If we can tell a story differently, we can ‘‘story’’ our lives differently. To understand a Greek myth, we have to be willing to look at the Greek culture. A myth contains the sediment, the settlings, of the culture that shaped it. Pour a Greek myth into a glass, drink it and you will find the dregs of the Greek culture. You will find the remnants of lingering beliefs. Like tea leaves, those dregs are prophecy. The Greek culture is present in modern religions. It lives in your subconscious. Those forgotten stories tell

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themselves over and over again in your dreams. You can find it in our language and in our collective psyche. We can recreate these stories. We can replace the devaluation of women with respect. We can add healing. We can take out blame.

The importance of reimagining ancient myths, of retelling ancient stories, is that, in doing so, we can change ourselves. We can make magic happen by changing our own consciousness through this retelling. In this way, magic, myt,h and ritual come together. Ritual lays patterns in the soul, that is, rituals help us to embed our desires for change and self-transformation in our souls and our bodies. Ritual helps to make our beliefs and our values more concrete, more certain. As Cynthea explains, At Diana’s Grove, we take a myth and retell it; we bring it to life and into community through ritual. Song, movement, color, action, interaction; ritual is a multi-sensorial prayer. My favorite myth about the word ritual is that it comes from a Sanskrit word that means Art. The same word also meansOrder. Art and Order. Regardless of the spiritual tradition, ritual is repetitive. It has an order to it. That order tells us what we are doing next. Repetition enables us to relax and slip out of attention’s tight suit and shoes. When we know the order, the spiritual rhythm of our prayer, our deeper knowing enters the moment. Order is the form. It lulls the analytical mind and calls your deep-self out to play. Art in a ritual: each individual is the art; we are the art. Each person, what we say and share, that is the art. Honesty, vulnerability, our willingness to be and to create together, to sing, play, pray and dance together; we are the art.

Because of this perspective on ritual, a group’s ritual practice should ritualize a group’s values. A group that values shared power, as Diana’s Grove does, should have a ritual pattern that shares the power. Diana’s Grove rituals break the pattern of priestess/performer and a passive congregation/circle that observers found in so many traditional religious contexts. Indeed, a significant part of the practice of Diana’s Grove is to teach ritual arts— drumming, chanting, trance—to those who wish to become more adept at the art of priestessing. As Cynthea writes about the ritual style of Diana’s Grove, ‘‘we involved people in an inclusive invocation, elicited community involvement and interaction, and began group planning for invocations. The motto is, ‘What you do is more effective than what you watch someone else do . . . no matter how skilled or talented that someone else is.’ If we want a ritual to end with interaction and with the group coming together to sing, dance and raise energy through involvement, then the pattern of the ritual needed to begin with interaction and involvement as well.’’ Cynthea points out that,

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[In ancient times], the whole community was involved in creating the prayer that ensured the success of the hunters or enabled the shaman to commune with the spirits of the plants and animals. Every person was involved in the rites and rituals that ensured the survival of their families and their clan. Such intentions invoke involvement. Involvement invokes energy. Energy, life force, makes magic. When we step fully into magic for ourselves, we will create magic for each other.

In this way, Diana’s Grove rituals create a pattern in the soul that engages values of inclusion and interaction, values that create the foundation of the Diana’s Grove community, and invoke myth and magic. Thus, Diana’s Grove rituals both express and form a way of understanding community that is transformative. These ideas about the transformative power of myth, magic, and ritual dovetail with ideas about community developed at Diana’s Grove. Indeed, at Diana’s Grove, magical practice and community agreements are inextricably linked to one another. The conceptual foundations for this community were developed in 1999 and are known as Cornerstones of Community at Diana’s Grove. Understanding the cornerstones is essential to understanding the goal of spiritual practice at Diana’s Grove. The first cornerstone is that of Choice.18 Diana’s Grove understands that each of us is a ‘‘being with choice.’’ That is, we have the power to choose, to make decisions in our lives. At the same time, our power to choose has limits, for we cannot entirely control what happens to us. The cornerstone of choice enables me to take responsibility for the choices that I can and do make in the context of the communities of which I am a part. The second cornerstone is Thinking Well of the Group. Thinking well of the group begins as simply as choice. If you choose to be in a group or community, you choose it because you think well of it. Thinking well of the group is easy when everything runs smoothly. When something is ‘‘off’’ we are challenged to continue to ‘‘think well of’’ instead of make assumptions based on influences from other experiences or our fears. Thinking well of the group allows each of us to understand that we are all trying to do the best that we can. A cornerstone equal to and parallel with thinking well of the group is Thinking Well of Yourself. What if, in your interactions with your group, you were to build your relationships on the cornerstone that you are a worthwhile being in the process of becoming whole, and so is everyone else? Thinking well of ourselves allows each of us to embrace the responsibility of living up to our worth, expressing our integrity in our actions and interactions with others. In addition to these three cornerstones, there are two others. The fourth cornerstone is Stewardship of Self. This cornerstone suggests that it is our

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primary responsibility in life to care for the skills and talents that we have been given. We are all individuals who have unique talents and skills that can be used in service to the community. To think of ourselves in this way suggests that we are participating in a community that appreciates the variety of talents offered by community members, and that understands that we each bear the responsibility for taking care of ourselves. The final cornerstone is that of Sacred Wound. We each enter this community wounded. Our individual wounds are a part of who we are and of our unique vision of the world. They are a part of our becoming and a part of our mythic journey, the great story that we live. Our wounds, although unique, don’t set us apart from each other. They are one of our common bonds. They are a piece of our common heritage. We all have stories of pain and heroism. We all can define ourselves by the violations to our soul, the impact on our bodies, or by betrayals that have wounded our hearts. Our wounds are unique, but that we are wounded is not. It is because of them rather than in spite of them that we each enter this community as whole beings. At Diana’s Grove, these five Cornerstones of Community are revisited again and again; they provide the foundation for communal intention. In times of confusion and disharmony, the key to the difficulties in interpersonal relationships is that one of these cornerstones is ‘‘out of place.’’ Engaging the cornerstones is a tool that can allow community members to realign our self-perceptions and the perception of others when there is conflict or disagreement. To understand that we have choice, to think well of self and others, to take the responsibility to steward our gifts, and to recognize that each of us has been wounded: these cornerstones go a long way in creating healthy and functioning community, and in turn, creating healthy and functional individuals. Diana’s Grove Cornerstones of Community thus provide the communal context in which the spiritual practices that use magic, myth, and ritual to enhance spiritual and personal growth can occur. The idea of magic as ‘‘changing (self-)conciousness at will’’ is supported through myths and rituals that ‘‘lay new patterns in the soul.’’ Learning about ourselves in relationship to others takes a lot of work, work that needs to take place in the context of a community of shared values and intentions. Magic, and the cultivation of wonder, can assist in maintaining a commitment to such difficult work. As Robert Fuller suggests, wonder ‘‘strengthens our capacity for moral conduct . . . by making it possible to envision general orders of existence in reference to which we might make moral judgments. Secondly, wonder motivates prolonged engagements with the surrounding world. By imbuing life with an alluring luster, wonder sustains our desire to connect with the surrounding world.’’19 At Diana’s Grove, magic, ritual, mythology, and individual and communal transformation are all of a piece; each of these ideas is dependent upon

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and works with the other. Spiritual practice is about individual and communal transformation. It is this interconnectedness that reveals the holistic and integrative spiritual quality of the work and practice of Diana’s Grove.

CONCLUSION Cynthea Jones describes the Winter Solstice 2006 staff meeting as follows: Our staff gathered on the Winter Solstice. From Ohio, Iowa, Illinois, and Oklahoma, from as far away as Seattle and New York, they came to Diana’s Grove. Bunker, Missouri is a crossroads village of 250 people. Seven miles away from us, with two gas stations and a school with a graduating class of seven, it is our closest town. Driving from there down a county highway, the staff came together to end 2006 and begin our twelfth year as a Mystery School and spiritual community. We lit a candle to honor the people who would leave us and seek another path, for those who would be taken away by the winds of change. We lit a candle for the people we have yet to meet, to honor those who live in the firelight of our imagination. We lit a candle for those who left and now, like the wave returns to the shore, would come back to us after a year or more of other pursuits. And last, we lit a candle for those who, through their consistency, have become the bedrock of our community, the soil that grows our dreams and the dreams of those who find us. With the year behind us illuminated by candlelight, we talked about why we do it. Why are people willing to travel so far, give so much, and work, not only without pay, but at our own expense? Individual reasons weave the fabric of the group. We shape our times by what we do. That is why we come together every month to create an experience for those who come to the Grove. Listening to the group share their reasons, dreams and visions, I knew why I want to be a part of this collection. I want to be a part of this fine work because our story is the story of many groups like us. Some larger than we are, some smaller, some with more history, some with less, but imagine us all. Small groups like ours are fighting to make room for a possibility; we are one of many. All across the country, groups like ours meet and dream and believe that we will make a difference in the spiritual climate of our times. Leaders, teachers, organizers, dreamers, unpaid priestesses all, we are deeply committed to shaping our world by creating a place for earth-based spiritual practices. We are each individuals. No shared doctrine or agreed-upon approach to the way we offer ritual or the deities we believe in . . . and, we are the

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same. Religion today is being shaped by small circles that offer a spiritual alternative. I can speak for one group and I do so knowing that I am one of many.

Cynthea’s understanding of the transformative possibilities of the work of Diana’s Grove suggests the importance of emerging integrative spiritual movements that provide an alternative world view to more established religious paths. Such movements resonate with the ideals of the environmental movement, for human beings do not live on the Earth; they live in and with the Earth. Whether described in scientific terms as an impersonal global ecosystem or as Gaia, the Earth Mother, the fact is that all life systems from rock to rock star are interconnected. We will do well to find the sacred right where we stand. In addition, integrative spiritual movements resonate with the ideals of feminism in that they encourage the development of women as skilled leaders, and they encourage the integration of aspects of human life—the physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual—not privilege certain power structures over others. Integrative spiritual movements are movements of inclusion in which it is recognized that maleness and femaleness are integral parts of the whole; their interplay forms the basis of all life. Integrative spiritual movements see harmonious balance, where dualistic world views envision a struggle for power between opposites. Finally, integrative spiritual movements offer a view of the interconnectedness between humans and nature, in all of their manifestations. Personal and spiritual growth are not disengaged from one another; rather, they are necessary to one another. Integrative spiritual movements such as that found at Diana’s Grove, suggest that we cannot survive, let alone thrive, without making peace with ourselves, the world around us, and each other.

NOTES 1. Starhawk (born Mariam Simos in St. Paul, MN, June 17, 1951). Author of several books on Paganism and an ecofeminist, she lives and works in San Francisco with Reclaiming, a tradition of witchcraft she co-founded in the late 1970s. 2. http://www.dianasgrove.com/aboutus/history.html. 3. Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, Tenth Anniversary Edition, Revised and Updated (New York: Harper-Collins, 1989), 16. 4. See Margot Adler, Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, GoddessWorshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today, Revised and Updated (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986), 9.

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5. Jone Salmonsen, Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco (New York: Routledge, 2002), 1. 6. Starhawk, The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess, Tenth Anniversary Edition, Revised and Updated (New York: Harper-Collins, 1989), 16. 7. See Eugene Gallagher, ‘‘Neo-Paganism,’’ in The New Religious Movements Experience in America (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004), 162–86. 8. http://www.dianasgrove.com/mystery/index.html. 9. A sample monthly packet can be found at http://www.dianasgrove.com /mystery/samplestory_workbook.pdf. 10. See Genevieve Lloyd, The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993); see also, Hilde Hein, ‘‘Liberating Philosophy: An End to the Dichotomy of Spirit and Matter,’’ in Women, Knowledge and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, ed. Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall (Boston: Unwin Hyman Publishers, 1989), 293–311. 11. http://www.dianasgrove.com/aboutus/earth.html. 12. http://www.dianasgrove.com/aboutus/earth.html. 13. More associations with the elements and directions can be found in The Spiral Dance, 251–54. 14. Thomas Moore, Care of the Soul. (New York: HarperPerrenial, 1994), 271. 15. David Abram, The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More Than Human World. (New York: Vintage Books, 1997). 16. http://www.dianasgrove.com/aboutus/individuation.html. 17. http://www.dianasgrove.com/mystery/whymythology.html. 18. For more information about the cornerstones, see http://www .dianasgrove.com/aboutus/cornerstones.html. 19. Robert Fuller, ‘‘Spirituality in the Flesh: The Role of Discrete Emotions in Religious Life,’’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 75, No. 1 (March 2007): 41.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abram, David. The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More Than Human World. New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Adler, Margot. Drawing Down the Moon: Witches, Druids, Goddess-Worshippers, and Other Pagans in America Today. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. Diana’s Grove Home Page. July 15, 2008, http://www.dianasgrove.com. Fuller, Robert. ‘‘Spirituality in the Flesh: The Role of Discrete Emotions in Religious Life.’’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 75: No. 1 (March 2007): 25–51.

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Gallagher, Eugene. ‘‘Neo-Paganism.’’ In The New Religious Movements Experience in America. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2004. Hein, Hilde. ‘‘Liberating Philosophy: An End to the Dichotomy of Spirit and Matter.’’ In Women, Knowledge and Reality: Explorations in Feminist Philosophy, edited by Ann Garry and Marilyn Pearsall, 293–311. Boston: Unwin Hyman Publishers, 1989. Lloyd, Genevieve. The Man of Reason: ‘Male’ and ‘Female’ in Western Philosophy. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993. Moore, Thomas. Care of the Soul. New York: HarperPerrenial, 1994. Salmonsen, Jone. Enchanted Feminism: The Reclaiming Witches of San Francisco. New York: Routledge, 2002. Starhawk. The Spiral Dance: A Rebirth of the Ancient Religion of the Great Goddess. Tenth Anniversary Edition, Revised and Updated. New York: Harper-Collins, 1989.

CHAPTER

12

The Good Wife: The Religious Experience of Women in Scientology Dawn L. Hutchinson

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hile Scientology is a high-profile religion in American society due to some of its celebrity followers and controversial teachings, it remains mysterious to most outsiders. Since fans of popular magazines read that some of their favorite celebrities, like Tom Cruise, Jenna Elfman, John Travolta, and Kirstie Allie are members of this religion, they want to know more about it. The publicly available information about Scientology seems vague, however. This chapter will first discuss the beliefs and practices of Scientology, and second, examine how those beliefs affect the religious lives of its female members. A discussion of socioeconomics, politics, and power will also be interwoven to aid our understanding of how this religion practically affects its followers. As in many other religions, women’s religious beliefs and practices in Scientology do not appear to correspond precisely with the sacred writings of the movement. Some of these seeming incongruities, however, can be explained as a modernization of a movement begun in the 1950s. Others are grounded in beliefs and practices determined during the founding and early development of this new religion. While some beliefs about women are consistent with Scientology’s doctrinal beliefs, others may seem to be contradictory. Although Scientology promotes traditional gender roles for families, these beliefs do not appear to limit the potential for women to hold leadership positions within the church.

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BELIEFS AND PRACTICES OF SCIENTOLOGY Originally a system designed to improve the mental health of individuals, Dianetics: The Original Thesis, written by L. Ron Hubbard in 1948, became the religion of Scientology in 1952. In Dianetics Hubbard asserted that the instinct to survive is basic for human existence. A person’s actions, whether nurturing or self-destructive, determine his or her survival. The struggle to survive is often inhibited by destructive tendencies within the individual. Hubbard explained these as aberrations, which could range from mental challenges to behavioral anomalies. Dianetics is most concerned with the science of the mind: those mental processes both positive and negative that affect one’s survival. In the religion of Scientology, based on Dianetics, humans work to rid themselves of the obstacles hindering their enlightenment. These obstacles are called ‘‘engrams,’’ which encompass unremembered pain from past traumas in the lives of adherents. Engrams, Hubbard asserted, are recorded at the cellular level. While ‘‘memory’’ is the simplest way to describe an engram, Hubbard explained that engrams are the ‘‘cellular trace of recordings impinged deeply into the very structure of the body itself.’’1 Ultimately, engrams serve to trap one’s spiritual self in this material world. The cosmology offered by L. Ron Hubbard in The Factors (1976) explains how humans came to be trapped in the material world and encumbered by engrams. This cosmology describes the state of the Universe before the beginning as inhabited by a ‘‘Cause.’’ The purpose of the Cause was to create the possibility of the first spiritual beings to exist. These spiritual entities, called ‘‘thetans,’’ had to decide ‘‘To Be.’’ Once they decided to exist, they created a viewpoint that necessitated space for the spiritual beings to look across. Since each spiritual being had a viewpoint, communication between them began. These thetans created the material world and chose to exist there. Eventually, the thetans began to identify more with the material world than the spiritual world, and they were drawn down into the material world. Their existence in the material world created time. While the material form of humans can cease to exist, their spiritual forms (thetans) can last forever. After existing for a long time in the material world, the thetans came to believe that they too could perish. The daily interactions between the self and the material world led to recordings (engrams) further entrenching the thetans in the material world.2 Thetans can be likened to the soul within human beings. L. Ron Hubbard maintained that engrams kept people from acting rationally. According to the theology of Scientology, the ultimate goal of the individual is to ‘‘achieve complete certainty of one’s spiritual existence, one’s relationship to the Supreme Being and his role in eternity.’’3 Reaching this

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goal would mean that members would achieve optimum mental health, revealing their purpose in this life. In order to reach enlightenment, engrams must be removed. Hubbard held that humans are responsible for reaching their own enlightenment. As some scholars have noted, this is an idea Scientology shares with Buddhism.4 Members can reach the state of ‘‘clear,’’ when they no longer have engrams impeding their ability to think and act logically. According to the Church of Scientology International, the person who is clear ‘‘is free with his emotions. He can think for himself. He can experience life unencumbered by inhibitions reactively dictated by past engrams . . . . Clears are self-confident, happy and generally successful in both careers and interpersonal relationships. It is a highly desirable state for any individual and is attainable by virtually anyone.’’5 The process of clearing engrams is called ‘‘auditing’’ in Scientology. Trained practitioners called auditors help members work through painful memories that block their spiritual progress. During auditing sessions, the auditor uses an ‘‘e-meter’’ (electropsychometer), which measures physical responses to memories (engrams) of the church member. Similar to a polygraph machine used to detect physical stress caused by lying, the e-meter measures low voltages through the skin of the adherent. Hubbard believed that engrams cause physical responses in an individual. Thus, when a person remembers a painful time in their life during an auditing session, the needle of the e-meter jumps to alert the auditor. When the e-meter shows that an engram is detected, the church member is encouraged to explore the reasons the memory is causing her or him such pain. The engram might have come from this life or a previous life. This process takes time, and is done in gradual levels, as the auditor feels the member is ready. The individual follows a route toward enlightenment called a ‘‘grade chart,’’ which shows each stage of awareness. The first step in an auditing session is for the auditor to check the ‘‘rudiments’’ of the ‘‘pre-clear’’ individual. Rudiment readings check to see if an individual is currently experiencing difficulties communicating with someone in his or her life, if the individual’s attention is fixed on a particular problem, or if he or she is withholding information from the auditor (or him or herself). If the individual is not experiencing any of these problems, then he or she is ready to continue with the auditing session. Otherwise, the individual is encouraged to talk through the problem during the session. When the person believes he or she is ready and the e-meter needle is ‘‘floating’’ (i.e., not indicating any distress in the participant), the auditor will begin by picking up from the pre-clear’s last session. For instance, if the individual noticed that he or she experienced nausea when near a body of water, the auditor will ask the person to remember the last time he or she was near water. They will continue going back through the person’s memories

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associated with water until the person feels they have uncovered the reason for experiencing nausea near water. The belief is that when a person can understand the reasons for his or her illogical fears or feelings, he or she can stop experiencing those feelings. This is part of the process toward becoming clear, which is the first goal in an individual’s progress toward enlightenment. In later writings, like The Factors mentioned above, Hubbard claimed that each human has a spiritual self, the thetan, who is encased in the physical body. The thetan is trapped by the material world and its limitations called MEST (matter, energy, space, time) and seeks release. Scientology offers escape from MEST through its religious system. While this is certainly a world-denying aspect of Scientology, it appears that Scientology does not reject the material world entirely. Scientology freely expresses that technology can assist humans in their struggle for survival and their progress toward enlightenment. Scientology claims that progress along the Bridge to Total Freedom will allow humans to operate at their optimum mental capacity, freeing them from the limitations of the material world. The Bridge to Total Freedom is a set of steps toward the state of clear. L. Ron Hubbard devised the Bridge as a ‘‘proper progression’’ for an individual toward enlightenment. If a person tries to go too fast, it is deemed likely he or she will encounter setbacks. On the ‘‘Scientology Classification Gradation and Awareness Chart of Levels and Certificates,’’ there are two types of advancement: advancement in one’s spiritual awareness, and advancement along the auditing training track. There are seven steps toward becoming clear; humans who reach this level of enlightenment are called operating thetans, or OTs. There are 15 levels of OT, indicating that after one becomes clear of engrams, there is still more work to be done.6 While the lower levels of Scientology help members to deal with everyday issues and personal relationships, the higher levels are intended to equip an individual to focus on his or her spiritual progress. Operating thetans are considered to be humans who have become ‘‘wholly themselves.’’ One achieves the state of operating thetan gradually, following the guidelines of Scientology. Once one has become clear, one moves through the stages of the Bridge to Total Freedom until one attains a realization of one’s own nature in context with one’s relationships to other humans and the world. Scientologists believe that in the state of operating thetan, a human being achieves release from the world of MEST. Thus, Scientologists believe that an operating thetan is able to control MEST, rather than be controlled by it. One cannot attain the state of clear or go on to operating thetan until one rids oneself of engrams impeding spiritual progress. In Scientology’s earliest text, Dianetics, Hubbard claimed that hundreds of engrams occur while a fetus is in the mother’s womb. Traumatic memories created before birth are the result of the mother’s emotional state, poor choices, and her actions.

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Hubbard claimed that a baby has memory of life in the womb, and according to him, ‘‘the womb is wet, uncomfortable and unprotected.’’ The baby experiences discomfort with all the mother’s actions: ‘‘Mama sneezes, baby gets knocked ‘unconscious.’ Mama runs lightly and blithely into a table and baby gets its head staved in. Mama has constipation and baby, in the anxious effort, gets squashed. Papa becomes passionate and baby has the sensation of being put into a running washing machine. Mama gets hysterical, baby gets an engram. Papa hits Mama, baby gets an engram. Junior bounces on Mama’s lap, baby gets an engram. And so it goes.’’7 Additionally, Scientologists believe that the noise, sounds, and words uttered during a child’s birth process may cause trauma, which produces engrams. Therefore, during the days or hours before a child is born, parents create a series of hand signals for communicating between parents and with medical professionals. Scientologists believe that this ‘‘silent birth’’ is a way for parents to assist their newborn in his or her spiritual development. According to Hubbard, the experience that causes the most damage in the womb is an attempted abortion. Because this painful memory is recorded in the form of engrams, Hubbard claimed that the child grows up fearful of its parents and creates unhealthy attachments to other adults. Hubbard held that many mentally ill patients could trace their problems back to the engrams recorded during an abortion attempt. As part of their religious practice, then, members must clear their spiritual selves of this prebirth pain. While the mother’s choices during pregnancy have repercussions for her child’s ability to attain enlightenment, Hubbard taught that individuals were responsible for ridding themselves of these and other painful memories. Church members take part in auditing sessions, attend lectures, seminars, and films, with the goal of gradually learning how to operate more effectively in their lives. The church building in Scientology is the center for many types of religious services available to its members. In addition to auditing practices, Scientology churches conduct weekly religious services, naming ceremonies for newborns, weddings and funerals. Usually, the focus of the weekly Sunday worship service is practicing the principles of Scientology in one’s daily life. The minister will speak on some aspect of Scientology doctrine and announce that community’s weekly activities, as well as recent news from the international churches. As part of the service, members say a prayer of petition titled ‘‘A Prayer for Total Freedom,’’ in which they ask the ‘‘author of the universe’’ for assistance in their search for enlightenment. The prayer asks God to help humans come to a right understanding of themselves and the world around them. Additionally, the prayer asks that the ‘‘author of the universe’’ preserve humanity from danger,

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imprisonment, violence, war, and poverty. The prayer is concerned with religious freedom and the search for enlightenment, both at a personal level and a societal level.8

Additionally, Scientology ministers conduct weddings and funerals for church members. Both men and women participate in leadership roles in religious services. This includes auditing, worship services, and life rites. Ministers receive their training and ordination through their local church, which is self-governing. Either men or women can become ministers in Scientology. Ministers can be trained to be pastors, auditors, or administrators. Local churches receive their license to operate as a Scientology organization from the Religious Technology Center. The Religious Technology Center (RTC) exists to preserve the teachings and technologies espoused by Scientology’s founder L. Ron Hubbard. Each local church has to follow the prescribed technology and procedures of Scientology, or it can lose its license from the Religious Technology Center.9 While they receive their license from the RTC, each church may choose its own minister and governing body. Each church also chooses how it will implement the Scientology principles and technology in its local congregation. Another avenue for members to be actively engaged in their local communities is to become volunteer ministers. Volunteer ministers are trained to respond in the case of disaster relief. According to the Church of Scientology, volunteer ministers provide emergency services as necessary ‘‘to immediately alleviate suffering and bring order quickly.’’10 There are approximately 87,000 volunteer ministers worldwide available for disaster relief efforts. These members of Scientology offer their ‘‘organization technology’’ to make the overall disaster relief effort more effective. In addition to receiving auditing sessions, adherents can take courses on how to live their lives more effectively at their local Scientology church. Many members read texts written by L. Ron Hubbard. Additionally, members can watch films illustrating Scientology principles, or browse in the bookstore offering various texts and videos meant to further members’ paths toward ‘‘clear.’’ Materials are available to members both in their local churches and on official Scientology Web sites. Because Scientology church officials believe that the individual progresses in a particular pattern, they only offer a member information about the different levels of enlightenment as the auditor deems the individual ready. For this reason, much of the theology of the higher levels of Scientology remains mysterious. However, the church is eager for people to know its basic belief system. Thus, much information is available to the general public on official Scientology Web sites and in publicly available published materials. L. Ron Hubbard wrote the creed of Scientology in 1954, which

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affirms that all humans were created with equal rights, including the right to their own sanity, to think freely, and to procreate. The creed also states that humans are basically good and exist to survive. The church believes that the laws of God forbid people to destroy one another, to destroy the sanity of another, to destroy or enslave another’s soul, or to hinder another’s survival.11 In Scientology, members do not dwell on the nature of God until they reach the stages of higher spiritual development. Scientology expresses eight ‘‘dynamics’’ that are part of a person’s survival: First, a person struggles to survive as an individual; second, a person struggles to survive as part of a family unit; third, a person struggles to survive as part of a group; fourth, a person struggles to survive as part of the human race; fifth, a person struggles to survive as a fellow member of all living things; sixth, a person struggles to survive as part of the physical universe (MEST); seventh, a person struggles to survive as a spiritual being; and finally, a person struggles to survive as infinity, or as part of the divine. Note that a person’s survival is described in concentric circles out from the self. Also notice that one’s spiritual life is one of the last things with which to concern oneself. While affirming that God exists, Scientology hesitates to define or describe God. In his book Science of Survival, L. Ron Hubbard explained that ‘‘No culture in the history of the world, save the thoroughly depraved and expiring ones, has failed to affirm the existence of a Supreme Being. It is an empirical observation that men without a strong and lasting faith in a Supreme Being are less capable, less ethical, and less valuable to themselves and society . . . A man without an abiding faith is, by observation alone, is more of a thing than a man.’’ While agreeing that God exists, members hesitate to define or describe God. Instead, members explain that when an individual reaches higher states of enlightenment, he or she can reach his or her own conclusions about the nature of God. While Scientology stresses the role of the individual in his or her enlightenment, the church also is concerned with social responsibilities. For this reason, Scientology has formed myriad organizations with the intent of offering the benefits of its religion to society at large: Narconon is a drug education and rehabilitation organization. Actress Kirstie Alley is a spokeswoman for Narconon. In an interview with Vernon Scott in 1990, she said of this Scientology program: Narconon is (the late) L. Ron Hubbard’s method of drug rehabilitation. I make public appearances and try to be the heart and soul of the project because it is so close to me and is so personal. Most of the people I know — literally — have been through drug rehabs two or three times. The difference is that this program stops the revolving-door effect. For me it means being drug free and learning to function in life. It takes anywhere from a

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month to six months, but the average is 12 weeks. There are Narconons all over the world. They don’t accept you unless you personally make the decision to stop for your own good. Not for anyone else or for any other reason. This program salvaged my life and began my acting career.

Other Scientology social outreach programs include Criminon, a prison outreach organization meant to rehabilitate criminals so that they can become productive members of society, and Applied Scholastics, an educational and tutoring program utilizing Hubbard’s study methods.12 While Scientology began in the United States, it has become an international presence. The church claims to have at least 10 million members in over 159 countries, with more than 6,000 churches and related buildings. Its headquarters are located in Clearwater, Florida. The church has magazines circulating internationally and has a presence on the Internet.

THE LIVES OF WOMEN IN SCIENTOLOGY Members of Scientology are generally not forthcoming about their religious experiences, because they worry that their comments could be used to paint a negative picture of Scientology. If the Religious Technology Center learned that a member contributed to an article that depicted Scientology negatively, it is possible that person could be sanctioned by the church. Participating in negative campaigning against the church is an ethics violation that requires ‘‘rehabilitation.’’ There are some Web sites and blogs maintained by former members that denounce Scientology. However, my aim is to demonstrate how the lives of current members were shaped by their religious beliefs. Thus, the quotes from women presented in this chapter come mainly from official Scientology Web sites and various member blogs. The official stance of Scientology regarding women seems to be that a woman’s first priority is to be a wife and mother. Other than asserting that some of the most painful engrams are the result of a child’s prenatal experience, Hubbard did not express many views on gender in Dianetics. However, in many of his later writings, he gave advice on forming lasting marital relationships, creating stable families, and raising mentally aware children. He also wrote a version of Dianetics especially for children. In addition, L. Ron Hubbard’s wife, Mary Sue Hubbard, wrote a text giving advice for husbands and wives, titled Marriage Hats. This text encourages rather conservative marriage roles for men and women. According to Hubbard, the wife is responsible for maintaining the home, living within the financial means of her husband, raising their children in the faith, supervising her children’s education, managing the couple’s birth control practices, submitting to her husband’s decisions, and keeping the lines of

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communication open between members of her family. The husband is the head of the household. He is responsible for financially supporting his family, making important family decisions, and performing ‘‘those functions around the home which a man does easily and well: to mow the lawn, fix a broken window, paint a room, build, repair, fix the car . . . .’’13 The husband is also instructed to keep the lines of communication open as part of his responsibilities. These texts by the founder and his wife might give one the impression that women have limited status in Scientology. However, while asserting negative images of expecting mothers and reinforcing traditional gender roles in the household, Scientology also offers women the same opportunities for leadership in the church and the same ability to achieve enlightenment as men. An interesting note supporting this idea appears in the introduction of Marriage Hats: [The Scientologist] is aware that life can be divided up into several spheres or dynamics and that each individual strives to develop and survive on many different levels; first, as himself; second, through sex and family; third, as a member of a group; fourth, as part of mankind; fifth, with all living things; sixth, as part of the physical universe; seventh, on an aesthetic or spiritual level; eighth, through God or infinity. These are called dynamics and optimumly [sic] each man or woman functions on all these levels. A Scientologist knows, therefore, that she may be wife and take instructions from her husband on the second dynamic, and also be an administrator and give orders on the third—as a member of a larger group.14

Scientology thus allows for women to be both submissive in the home and in a leadership position in the public sphere. While this may seem contradictory, Hubbard gives an explanation consistent with the world view of Dianetics. Also, while a reading of the description of the ‘‘marriage hat’’ for wives might lead one to believe that women are to be housewives, reading the description of the husband’s ‘‘marriage hat’’ allows for working mothers. In the husband’s instructions to handle the financial matters in the home, it reads: ‘‘If the wife also works, the husband and wife should get together and agree upon who will pay for what.’’ While many Scientology women choose to stay at home with their children, it appears (in practice, at least) that nearly as many choose to work outside the home. While certainly more upper middle class women are attracted to Scientology, there are many lower middle class women who become members as well. No matter the economic level, however, it is clear that a career does not negate the wife’s chief duties of maintaining the family home.

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Laurie Hamilton, a member of Scientology who answers questions online as an ‘‘expert’’ for the church, explained her involvement in the church: I am a second generation Scientologist whose parents began in Dianetics in 1950 and studied directly with L. Ron Hubbard. I have been personally active in the church for over three and a half decades, have ten years former staff experience in both technical and administrative areas, and extensive technical and administrative training and counseling. I am ‘‘clear’’ and ‘‘OT.’’ I come from an extended family of many religions, but my spouse and children are Scientologists, as are my siblings and their spouses, several cousins, nieces, nephews, an aunt, and an uncle. Between us we have had every good and bad experience one might go through in the church at every level.

Perhaps another reason that women are afforded some measure of equal opportunity in Scientology is that Hubbard did not assign a gender designation for the thetan, or soul. This is likely because gender is a by-product of the material body in which the thetan is encased. Scientology views all people as spiritual entities, sharing a common nature. All souls, or thetans, are capable of attaining the state of operating thetan. However, the Church of Scientology acknowledges that men and women are different. While church doctrine does not state that one gender is inherently above the other, Scientology believes that men and women have different roles. This is consistently described in Mary Sue Hubbard’s book Marriage Hats. One woman, a second-generation Scientologist, explained that when a man and woman are married in Scientology, they affirm that they are two spiritual beings who are agreeing to create a family. The wedding ceremony reminds the couple that in a family there are gender roles and that men and women approach life differently. The wedding marks the couple’s agreement that they will decide which roles they will each assume and that they will support one another in carrying out their respective responsibilities in creating their family. She also explained that the Scientology wedding ceremony often includes the minister reminding the couple of the symbol called the ARC triangle. This symbol represents the three elements that constitute understanding, according to L. Ron Hubbard: ‘‘A’’ stands for ‘‘affinity,’’ which is the closeness that the couple shares; ‘‘R’’ stands for ‘‘Reality,’’ on which the couple agrees; and ‘‘C’’ stands for ‘‘Communication,’’ the interchange of ideas necessary for understanding between two people. One member named ‘‘Kim,’’ explained that all three points of the ARC triangle add up to understanding. If at any time, one of the points of the triangle becomes affected, it will cause less understanding between the two persons in a relationship.

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During a wedding, the minister will remind the couple that an increase in any of the points of the triangle will cause greater understanding, leading to a successful relationship. It seems that many members believe that learning to communicate properly through Scientology has improved their quality of life. On Scientology’s home page, one member enthuses: ‘‘Eighteen years ago, Scientology saved my marriage and my business. It also liberated me from drugs and alcohol. Now, my family and I are prospering as never before. With total clarity and certainty I can see now what I only dimly suspected back then: that my life was headed down a long, dark chute to nowhere. Only one thing altered that course for me and that was the ultimate truth contained in the writings of L. Ron Hubbard.’’ Another professes: ‘‘Since becoming a Scientologist I feel very stable and a lot happier than I did before. My understanding of this world was almost nonexistent before Scientology. Now life isn’t a mystery to me anymore. I’m not afraid or worried about my past, present, or future. I’m now able to handle difficult situations with Scientology technology. I continue to maintain a happy marriage and good relationships with my friends and family. I can’t imagine life without Scientology.’’ According to the Church of Scientology, the family is ‘‘the building block of any society and marriage (is an) essential component of a stable family life.’’ The Church of Scientology touts statistics supporting its members’ successful family lives as a result of membership in the church. In a survey of their members taken sometime between 1992–1998, Scientology reported that the marriage rate of their members more than doubled after their involvement with the religion. Most adherents had a more positive view of marriage after they became members: 41.5 percent claimed that marriage was vital, and 50.1 percent said marriage was desirable. In addition, most Scientologists chose to raise families: approximately 97 percent of couples had children. While the timing, region, and sample size are lacking for verification, these statistics at least demonstrate that the church believes that marriage and family are important for its members. As mentioned previously, one of a Scientology mother’s responsibilities is to see that her children are properly educated. Scientologists believe that to raise a child in Scientology is to rescue a thetan, enabling it to return to its ‘‘real home’’ with the creator. This body is a necessary, though ‘‘temporary vessel’’ in which the thetan resides until it can reach enlightenment. So the mother’s role of managing her child’s education is absolutely essential in the family unit. While the father is in charge of financial decisions regarding education and has the final say on an educational institution, the mother is to see that the day-to-day education of her children is taking place effectively. Because L. Ron Hubbard developed a study technology geared toward helping people learn more effectively, Scientology has created schools and

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curriculum for the children of its members called Applied Scholastics. Thus, depending on the location of members, children may attend private Scientology schools, or parents can home-school their children with Scientology curriculum. Home-schooling largely is the responsibility of mothers. One young Scientologist named ‘‘Audrey’’ explained that she went to a private school in Boston called Delphi Academy. While she did not say so, Delphi Academy is a private school that employs the pedagogy of L. Ron Hubbard. Audrey describes her education: ‘‘The way it works there is that every kid gets a program with lots of different courses in it. The program is tailored for that kid based on what kinds of things he likes to do and what he enjoys learning about. There are of course requirements on every program that everyone has to do, but the majority of it are things specifically for him. Then he moves at his own pace on his program, and the kids there are extremely smart and love to learn. I graduated school when I was 12 and went on to high school. The majority of the kids that go there graduate about that age and their tests are all above average . . . . I took courses at the Church of Scientology in Boston when I was a kid. The ones I did were Personal Values & Integrity, The Way to Happiness Course, and the Communication Course. I did these with my friends when we were 7 or 8.’’ L. Ron Hubbard was convinced that many people learn ineffectively, because they do not attend to each idea they are reading. For example, at the beginning of each of Hubbard’s books is an ‘‘Important Note.’’ This note warns readers to make sure they do not read past any words they do not understand. It then states: ‘‘The only reason a person gives up a study or becomes confused or unable to learn is because he or she has gone past a word that was not understood.’’ Thus, the note encourages the person to read slowly and look up any words that he or she does not understand. Each text offers a glossary of terms used (Scientology does use language unique to its faith), and one can purchase or read online a glossary of commonly used words in Scientology texts. If Scientology parents decide to send their children to non-Scientology schools, the mother will closely monitor the children’s educational progress. She will likely tutor the children after school and, if their location allows it, she might enroll her children in Scientology tutoring programs at their local church. The process of putting her children in before- or after-school classes at the church is called ‘‘putting the children on course.’’ These classes teach the child behavior, focus, and communication skills. Natalie Walet, interviewed by Janet Reitman in 2006 for Rolling Stone Magazine, explained that she was educated in the Scientology curriculum. Her parents and grandmother are Scientologists. She was educated by special tutors and enrolled in private schools with Hubbard-approved curriculums, and enrolled in special classes at her church in order to ‘‘put her on

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course.’’ She describes her life as ‘‘kind of a bubble.’’ What she likes about Scientology, is that ‘‘it bears a workable technology that you can use in your everyday life.’’15 In addition to their roles as wives and mothers, women in Scientology constitute a large part of the church leadership, enabling them to participate in the power and politics of the movement. Many women work in the welcome centers for the church, and it is common for women to take up auditor training or become ministers of their local churches. The Church of Scientology often asks women who reach the state of clear, or further, the state of operating thetan, to participate in missions, advanced organizations, or higher levels of church administration. One of the highest honors in Scientology is to be asked to become a member of the Sea Organization, or Sea Org. This is considered a religious order for Scientology, and members who join have devoted their lives to serve their religion. In the early years of Scientology, one would sign a contract for one billion years of service, which meant that one intended to devote not only this life, but the next several lives to service for the religion of Scientology. According to the Church of Scientology, Sea Org members work long hours and live communally with housing, meals, uniforms, and medical care provided by the church. Women in the Sea Org have complained that they are discouraged from becoming pregnant, since the Sea Org was not designed to feed, house, and educate children. According to Mary Tabayoyon’s signed affidavit of March 5, 1994, women who become pregnant while in service to the Sea Org are strongly encouraged to have an abortion.16 If they refuse and choose to have a child, Sea Org members are punished by being removed from the organization for a time and are assigned menial tasks until the child is old enough to have a parent actively engaged again in the Sea Org. Additionally, becoming pregnant while serving Sea Org is considered an ethics violation, which means that one has committed an offense against Scientology. After committing an ethics offense, members are sent for special auditing sessions geared toward ‘‘rehabilitation.’’ While these policies contradict Scientology’s beliefs about abortions and about the value of families, they only apply to Sea Org members who have devoted their lives to this religion. The reasoning seems to be that these members need to be single-mindedly attentive to their duties as members of this part of Scientology. Many women claim that Scientology helps them become more effective wives and mothers. One woman insisted: ‘‘In this course one can find a guide to better raise, understand and teach his or her child or children. I now understand how to get a child to communicate his/her thoughts and feelings after seeing arguments, disputes, etc. This course helps one to realize that a child is a person too with feelings, emotions, and a personality of its own. The course teaches you to allow the child to grow into his/her own person

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and not to try to dictate a personality to him or her. Children are not to be trained like dogs, they are not puppies, they are little people who will grow up to be our future.’’ Another woman shared: ‘‘Scientology counseling has expanded my reach for my family, my friends and mankind. I really want to help them survive. I find I have very little attention on myself personally as I have personal fulfillment, leaving time for involvement in my children’s schooling and community activities. I now have a high personal esteem for my friends and family.’’17 Given the emphasis placed on family and the proper raising of children in Scientology, women feel empowered in their roles of wife and mother. Their part in shaping their family is considered an important contribution to the church at large. Women are given many opportunities to take advantage of training and enrichment courses to help them advance in their family roles. Many women also find Scientology helps improve their spiritual lives. Following are a few testimonials available on the Scientology Today Web site maintained by the church’s press office. Barbara Wilson explains that Scientology helped give her life purpose: ‘‘For the past 25 years I have been on the most wonderful spiritual quest in Scientology. With my own problems and concerns handled, I have more attention on others and expanding my life, so I am very active and productive. My husband and I own a large consulting company, with thousands of professionals as clients, through which we have been able to help all these people reach their goals and improve their lives. We also have five children, ages 6 to 19, who are very responsible and independent and following their own purposes. They have a strong moral code as their foundation and they have the freedom to be themselves.’’ Likewise, Kathe Laiss explains: ‘‘Scientology gave me a certainty of my own spirituality which has resulted in a completely different outlook on life. I know that I am not just a body, but an immortal spiritual being. Death is not an ending but a new beginning. I know that what I leave behind in this life, I will surely inherit in the next. As a result, I take more responsibility for myself and my environment. I have much more respect, understanding and affinity for my fellow man and live with much more happiness and intensity than I ever did before Scientology.’’ Finally, Susan Kerr believes that Scientology helped give her life focus and meaning: ‘‘As a young woman, I was adrift in life, not sure where to go and what to do. When I discovered Scientology in 1970, I immediately realized that I had hit on a workable technology of life that would not only make me happier, but would provide me with the means to better all facets of my life and to improve things for those around me. Since then, I have grown more spiritually aware and found the answers to questions we all ask about life. My ability to confront life, handle situations and to take responsibility for others and myself has markedly improved. Today, I have a wonderful

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marriage, great kids and a very fulfilling life. I can honestly say that had it not been for Scientology, I would not be as happy and successful as I am today.’’ One aspect of Scientology that is particularly striking to an outsider is the male-centered language of all the texts. One might assume that this is a by-product of texts written in the 1950s by a male founder. However, contemporary texts and official Scientology Web pages continue to contain this male-centered language. For instance, the Aims of Scientology are described as ‘‘a civilization without insanity, without criminals and without war, where people can prosper and honest beings can have rights, and where man is free to rise to greater heights . . . .’’18 Again, one might assume that this is a quote from the founder. However, individual members also often use this language. For instance, ‘‘Audrey’’ explained that ‘‘the program is tailored for that kid based on what kinds of things he likes to do and what he enjoys learning about.’’ The church does, however, appear to be in the process of moving away from this male-centered language in much of its more recent literature. Women Scientologists have many opportunities for personal improvement, as that is the main goal of this religion. In addition to auditing sessions, women who are interested in improving their parenting skills or creating stable families can take advantage of church programs offered to its members. For instance, the church offers a film called The Married Couple, shown at local Scientology churches. In addition, members can participate in seminars like ‘‘Starting a Successful Marriage,’’ ‘‘How to Improve Your Marriage,’’ and ‘‘How to Maintain a Successful Marriage.’’ For relationship improvement, members can take the ‘‘How to Improve Your Relationships with Others’’ course and others like it. Members can purchase workbooks and other texts like the Scientology handbook or Child Dianetics. Women, like men in the movement, can take advantage of all the programs, workshops, and literature available to Scientologists interested in seeking enlightenment. Women who wish to hold leadership roles within Scientology must navigate the clearing process, become an auditor, apply the principles, and move up the hierarchy within the church, just as men must do. It would seem that the only potential obstacle for women in leadership roles might be membership in the Sea Org. The Sea Org discourages women from having families, since family life would likely compete with her commitment to the organization.

INTERNAL POLITICS AND CONTROVERSIES There are at least four aspects of the Church of Scientology that have caused some controversy with outsiders to the faith: their financial practices, their ‘‘member management’’ practices, their beliefs about personal health, and their ‘‘creation myth,’’ which has recently become common knowledge

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outside of Scientology. Originally, most of the controversy surrounding the Church of Scientology had to do with its financial practices. Auditing services are essential for a person’s membership, yet the fees charged for this service can be hefty. Members purchase auditing sessions in 12.5-hour blocks called ‘‘intensives.’’ The prices for auditing sessions vary according to the level. While an introductory intensive might cost $750, advanced intensives can cost as much as $8000 or more.19 In addition, seminars, books, videos, and advanced training must be purchased by members. Some members train to be auditors so they can defray the cost of auditing for themselves and their families. Service hours can also help Scientologists navigate the expenses of their membership. One woman claimed that she traded her own auditing sessions for those that she conducted for other members. The church asserts that these costs are analogous to the costs of any higher education courses that one might take at a college or university. The Church of Scientology’s ‘‘membership management’’ practices also cause outsiders some concerns, and often lead members to leave the religion. When the church perceives a threat, whether from inside or outside its membership, it tries to neutralize the danger. This is most noticed by insiders. If a member speaks out against the church in public, the member can be designated as a ‘‘suppressive person’’ and eventually may be excommunicated. The church explains that a ‘‘suppressive person’’ intentionally seeks to undermine the church’s missions and may spread bad news about the church to outsiders. If a member begins to question the church membership, they can be ‘‘tagged,’’ which means that they are perceived as a threat that can potentially be rehabilitated. The Internet, while an indispensable tool for the church, has also become a danger. Former members have been quick to criticize Scientology’s member practices on blog pages and other Internet sites. One blogger named ‘‘Emma,’’ a former member of the church, explained that she was required to do additional auditing training because she complained that required auditor training in Sydney took her away from her eleven-month-old child for an undetermined amount of time. She flew home, but the church sent her for more evaluations and testing because of her protests. She explains that ‘‘over the next few years I did make some effort to get back in the church’s good graces. Understand that this was never my personal choice but one I made out of duty to my husband who was desperate to get his Scientology wife back. In effect I was playing the game of ‘trying to keep the marriage together for the child even if it’s based on lies.’ ’’ Some former members complain that they were compelled to stay in auditing sessions until their facilitator deemed it ‘‘safe’’ for them to leave, making them feel trapped or confined. Others claim that their health matters were ignored due to Scientology’s conviction that many health maladies are due to errors in thinking. Other former members criticize the movement for

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Sea Org’s policies concerning women. For the most part, however, it seems that Scientology’s member management practices constitute the most concern. One former member, Monica Pignotti, who became a member in 1970 in Utah, explains this strange contradiction thus: Hubbard claimed to be anti-authoritarian. After all, we had only to look within ourselves to find the truth. It was completely unnecessary to rely on any person who called himself an authority. Any authority, that is, except him, and this is where all the contradictions come into play. The Sea Org, Scientology’s inner circle, is one of the most authoritarian groups imaginable. Many people, such as myself, who were originally attracted to Scientology because it advocated independence and self-determinism later found ourselves living under a totalitarian dictatorship on a ship with L. Ron Hubbard at the helm. Hubbard had said, ‘‘There are no absolutes,’’ but the closer one gets to the inner circle of Scientology, the more one discovers that Hubbard’s authority is an absolute, never to be questioned or criticized.20

While Monica was a member in the relatively early years of Scientology, her statement resonates with the concern of other former members over the contradiction between self-realization and the power of the church. A member management practice that has been noticed by outsiders is called ‘‘disconnection.’’ While the Church of Scientology regards the family and the individual’s place in society as important for her or his spiritual advancement, there are times when a person may choose to ‘‘disconnect’’ with family or friends for a period of time. Some outsiders assume that these breaks with family or friends are mandated by the church, and so this has also become somewhat controversial for Scientology. The church explains that to choose not to communicate with someone who can potentially harm a person should be a fundamental human right.21 Disconnection is meant to be a temporary situation until the antagonism between the church member and outsider ceases. Because he is a celebrity member of Scientology, Tom Cruise has brought Scientology’s beliefs about mental health to a wider audience through American tabloids and television shows. As a result of his Scientology beliefs, Cruise has consistently spoken out against medicines used for the treatment of mental illnesses. Hubbard believed that the psychology field ill-advisedly used drugs to treat illnesses curable through Scientology’s practices. Because Hubbard taught that many mental illnesses are caused by prebirth trauma and engrams from previous lives, Scientology believes that one of the first steps of a new member is a purification ritual. The ‘‘Purification Rundown’’ is designed to rid a person’s body of drugs and other toxins like

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food preservatives, pesticides, and other poisons found in the atmosphere. Members go through a process of exercise, saunas, nutritional alteration, and rest in order to purify their bodies from harmful toxins. Drugs believed to be particularly harmful are those prescribed for mental illnesses. Hubbard taught that the mental health industry was responsible for improperly prescribing medicines for conditions that he considered inherently spiritual in nature. Scientology does recommend that its members seek medical treatment for physical ailments. The body is part of MEST and is therefore subject to the laws of the material world until a member reaches a state of operating thetan, wthus being freed from MEST. However, Scientology has, since its inception, been critical of medicines used by mental health professionals. To date, there does not appear to have been any activism among members geared toward changing the church’s policies on mental health drugs. Instead, those who disagree tend to leave the church. Also, because Scientology uses unfamiliar terminology and surrounds the upper levels of its belief system in mystery, many outsiders view this religion with suspicion. Recently, former members of the faith made some of this material available on the Web through a free speech and human rights organization called Watcher. The television cartoon South Park on Comedy Central parodied the religious beliefs of Scientology using some of this newly available information. The South Park parody featured ‘‘Xenu,’’ who froze and transported thetan souls to volcanoes in Teegeeack, now known as Earth. This is one aspect of Scientology’s explanation for how souls (thetans) got trapped into the material bodies on this Earth. The Church of Scientology does not welcome this type of publicity, of course. In addition, it excommunicates current or former members who ridicule or publicly denounce Scientology, as a matter of protecting its belief system. Scientology has been a popular subject for religion scholars over the last several years. In fact, the Church of Scientology International invited some scholars to submit articles about its religion for publication by the church in 1998. However, whether members or nonmembers, scholars who offer analysis or criticism of this movement open themselves up to potential censure from the church. In addition, there is a controversy among scholars themselves. Some scholars choose to criticize Scientology’s religious practices and beliefs. Others try to show why and how the religious beliefs of Scientology create worlds of meaning for its members. The latter scholars open themselves up to being labeled as ‘‘apologists’’ for Scientology by the former. So, even scholarship of this religion has caused some measure of controversy. Because of the controversies mentioned above and Scientology’s status as a new religion, many outsiders have labeled Scientology as a cult. The term ‘‘cult’’ was originally coined by sociologists, and meant a religion started from new ideas—one that did not break off from a previously existing

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religion. Howard Becker was the individual who attached the term cult to these small, loosely organized religious groups.22 While the term cult is still sometimes used by Sociology of Religion scholars, it is used as a descriptive term, based on the organizational structure of the movement. In its more popular connotation, the term cult refers to nontraditional religions that members of more mainstream religions do not understand. The use of the word cult has produced problems in the mind of the public, thanks to cult watch groups that take scholarly information on cults and offer misinformation. In the case of Scientology, many contemporary scholars have studied the movement and found that it is a legitimate new religious movement.23 Scientology certainly has a well-developed world view with implications for this life and the next and offers its adherents a path to follow based on moral precepts. As mentioned above, the Church of Scientology International has invited scholarship in some of its own volumes explaining its beliefs to outsiders. Because the term cult is such a loaded term, many scholars who study Scientology have used terms like ‘‘new religious movement,’’ ‘‘alternative paths,’’ or ‘‘new religion’’ to describe it. As mentioned in the introduction of this chapter, Scientology has several aspects that appear contradictory. While the goal of this religion to release souls from their material human bodies implies that Scientology might devalue this world, it instead embraces the technology of this world. Members are not asked to renounce their material goods, in fact, their material wealth is essential for their membership in the church. Less prosperous members can advance only through careful financial planning,trading services, and volunteering their time within their church community. In addition, while Scientology stresses that members are in charge of their own salvation, the church closely manages the progress of each individual member. One particularly sees this contradiction in the practices of the Sea Org. As for the role of women in the church, there are two seeming contradictions. First, Scientology stresses the importance of family, yet, in the interests of the church, Scientology sometimes will separate individuals from their families for periods of time or, in the case of the Sea Org, will punish those who begin families. Second, while Scientology emphasizes traditional roles for husbands and wives and uses male-gendered language in its literature and liturgy, Scientology offers women leadership roles in the church.

CONCLUSION Since women members are expected by the Church of Scientology to put their roles of wife and mother first, they have different obstacles to master if they wish to become part of the leadership of the church. However,

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the doctrine of Scientology does not limit positions of power that women may hold in the church, and both men and women are capable of enlightenment. While Scientology espouses traditional gender roles for women, it appears that women are just as likely as men to fill leadership roles within the church. There are, however, some aspects of Scientology that might be disturbing for some women. Certainly the language of the religious texts is male-centered, since the earliest works date back to the 1950s. The traditional gender roles, particularly in the household, might alienate some potential female adherents. Also, the fervent anti-abortion stance and anti-mental health medication policies could deter others from joining this religion. Additionally, the restrictions on women’s reproductive rights as members of the Sea Org might cause some members of Scientology to hesitate before making such a life-altering commitment to that part of the religion. However, many women find Scientology to be beneficial in their personal and professional lives. Women are found at all levels of church administration and ministry. Women find the church’s teachings help them to fulfill their individual spiritual needs, as well as offer them guidance in their marriages, their family lives, and relationships as members of society. Overall, Scientology offers women the possibility of stable families, clear communication with their spouses, and a personal path toward enlightenment. Additionally, if women wish to do so, they are able to become part of the leadership of the church. These benefits might outweigh possible deficits for women who identify with with the goals of Scientology.

NOTES 1. L. Ron Hubbard, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, a Handbook of Dianetics Procedure (Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, 1950, 1985), 141. 2. This cosmology can be found in Hubbard’s The Factors (1976), in the theology of Scientology listed below, and further treatment can be found in my master’s thesis, ‘‘A Search for Contemporary Gnosticism: A Methodology,’’ submitted to the University of South Florida, August 2001. 3. The Church of Scientology International, Scientology: Theology and Practice of a Contemporary Religion. A Reference Work Presented by the Church of Scientology International (Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, 1998), cover page. 4. For instance, M. Darrol Bryant, ‘‘An Analysis and Review of a New Religion’’ and Fumio Sawada, ‘‘The Relationship between Scientology and Other Religions,’’ both in Scientology: Theology and Practice of a Contemporary Religion.

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5. The Church of Scientology International, based on the writings of L. Ron Hubbard, What Is Scientology? (Los Angeles.: Bridge Publications, 1998), 66–67. 6. ‘‘The Bridge to Total Freedom: Scientology Classification Gradation and Awareness Chart of Levels and Certificates,’’ reproduced in What is Scientology?, 99. 7. Hubbard, Dianetics, 141. 8. Church of Scientology International Web site. 9. J. Gordon Melton, The Church of Scientology, Studies in Contemporary Religion Series (Salt Lake City, Utah: Signature Books in Cooperation with the Center for Studies on New Religions, 2000), 39–40. 10. Description of volunteer ministers offered on Scientology’s Web site: http://www.volunteerministers.org. 11. A full copy of this creed can be found in the Church of Scientology International’s Scientology: Theology and Practice of a Contemporary Religion, in the references section. 12. Other outreach programs include: The Way to Happiness, an organization devoted to moral reform using L. Ron Hubbard’s nonreligious moral code; The Citizens Commission on Human Rights (CCHR), an organization that works to end psychiatric abuses; and the National Commission on Law Enforcement and Social Justice, an organization devoted to promoting and advancing the cause of civil rights in America and the international community. 13. Mary Sue Hubbard, The Marriage Hats (Los Angeles: Church of Scientology of California, 1970, 1974, 1978) (Copyright by L. Ron Hubbard). 14. Mary Sue Hubbard, The Marriage Hats, 3. 15. From Janet Reitman’s article for Rolling Stone Magazine, ‘‘Inside Scientology: Unlocking the Complex Code of America’s Most Mysterious Religion,’’ Rollingstone.com, February 23, 2006. 16. Mary Tabayoyon’s Affidavit is from Church of Scientology International v. Steven-Fishman and Uwe Geertz, U.S. District Court, Central District of California, Case # Cv916426HLH, March 5, 1994. 17. Each of the testimonials presented comes from Scientology’s Homepage, under ‘‘family.’’ 18. Scientology Press Office, Scientologytoday.org Web site. 19. These prices are taken from Janet Reitman’s article for Rolling Stone Magazine. She went to a Scientology welcome center as a client and was quoted these prices by a member. Janet Reitman, ‘‘Inside Scientology: Unlocking the Complex Code of America’s Most Mysterious Religion,’’ Rollingstone.com, February 23, 2006. 20. Monica Pignotti, ‘‘My Nine Lives in Scientology’’ (1989), available at http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dst/Library/Shelf/pignotti/index.html. 21. See Scientologytoday.org, under Frequently Asked Questions/‘‘What is disconnection?’’

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22. Colin Campbell, ‘‘Cult,’’ in Encyclopedia of Religion and Society ed. William H. Swatos Jr. (Walnut Creek, London, and New Delhi: Altamira Press, 1998), 122–23. 23. See the bibliography at the end of this chapter for the most prominent scholars studying Scientology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Bednarowski, Mary Farrell . New Religions and the Theological Imagination in America. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989. The Church of Scientology International. Scientology: Theology and Practice of a Contemporary Religion. Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, 1998. Hubbard, L. Ron. Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health, a Handbook of Dianetics Procedure. Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, 1950, 1985. The Church of Scientology International. What Is Scientology? (based on the writings of L. Ron Hubbard). Los Angeles: Bridge Publications, 1998. Melton, J. Gordon. The Church of Scientology. Studies in Contemporary Religion. Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books & CESNUR, 2000.

CHAPTER

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Senses of Place: Women Greening Communities Kimberly Whitney

Place is one of the lesser angels . . . . Nevertheless, it is this lowlier angel that concerns us here. There have been signs that she has been rather neglected of late; maybe she could do with a little petitioning. —Eudora Welty1

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udora Welty’s description of place as an angel, an evocative image captured in the lines above, is a bit like an icon or stained glass, a holy snapshot of something understated yet vastly important. ‘‘Angel,’’ from its Hebrew roots, is one who is ‘‘sent,’’ divine or human, with a particular role or work to accomplish or support. Welty envisions an angel that is sent from a place or perhaps for a place, presumably with a message about the places where we live. Welty notes as only this grand novelist of the South could the religiosity that grounds our lives and the common good in the places where we live and move and have our being. Sandra Schneiders, a feminist New Testament scholar, has likewise observed that the task of looking at the ‘‘where’’ of our spiritual and moral lives ranks among the most important areas of reflection in religious studies.2 Perhaps Welty’s angel of place is a messenger to inspire us to attend more closely to the geography, culture, and ecology that make up the ‘‘where’’ of our common lives. As the angels of the twenty-first century receive their necessary due: angels of economics and resources, history and politics, technology and sustainability, science and health,the angel of place emerges for petitioning.

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Welty goes so far as to suggest the ‘‘lesser angel’’ of place is actually the ground of peace, a basis for intercultural exchange, an imaginative muse for the arts. No diminutive angel, this lowlier one. And ‘‘she’’ has begun to attract attention. Among the mainline Protestant denominations in the United States, recently the Episcopal Church and the United Church of Christ issued statements with a sense of place—urging care and appreciation of a creation that is inherently good and possesses an inherent worth from God. The pastoral letter from the United Church of Christ urged special attention to remedying environmental racism. The World Council of Churches has recently urged global attention to the devastating social and ecological burden climate change imposes on the poor, particularly women, children, and indigenous communities. The economic, then, is part of the ecological, and the social is a part of the ecological, as we learn how to dismantle environmental racism, address significant ecological issues of our time, and celebrate the beauty of diverse cultures and expressions of the created order. Drawing primarily on women writers and community figures, this chapter explores place and sense of place with attention to religious practices of Earth and community care by some of the angels, as it were, of place. Four benchmark ‘‘best practices’’ of place that spring from what women are doing through their religious imagination or identities are explored here: (1) healing and restorative justice work; (2) supporting regional culture, ecology, and economics; (3) offering complex attention to displacements and migrations; and (4) developing a spirituality of beauty. The four practices of place woven through this chapter are in conversation with three writers: Eudora Welty, for her maverick essay on place in fiction that gives a sense of neighborhood and regionality; bell hooks, for her cultural criticism and deep attention to emotional bonds to place in the African American Diaspora experience; and Alice Walker her very particular and probably lesser-known essay that brings animals and the creaturely world into conversation with a postmodern spirituality. All together, for reasons of region, cultural displacement and reconnection, and attention to the more-than-human world, these writers give us a taste of important social, environmental, and religious themes related to senses of place. A short essay from each of these writers is used for this reflection as an introduction to place and their work on what I’m proposing is a key theme in religious identity and practice in the world. In order to prepare to turn to these writers to examine ‘‘place-making’’ practices that contribute to sustainability with attention to a sense of the sacred in the fiber and landscape, land and people, beauty and healing struggles for well-being, we need first to build a working definition of place.

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PLACE . . . THE LANDSCAPES WHERE WE LIVE . . . THE ‘‘HEART’S FIELD’’ Thoughtful readers who are interested in spiritual geography will find many definitions of place in this reflection. These may inspire creating a few more of your own, that speak to particular contexts. At the onset, if place is a four-way intersection of nature and culture, where geography and ecology meet the social history of people living their lives in the world, then place is all about a network of relationships in time and space. Margaret Miles, historian of Christianity, argues that what is religious, is essentially relational. Place, then, and a sense of place, is a network of relationships that include a sense of the sacred in the world. When places are marked by conflict, disaster recovery, or peace and justice struggles for the community or nation, these struggles are woven into the relational canvas of place, marking needs for healing and ongoing transformation in human hearts, communities, and ecological landscapes. An example of this is found with trees—clear-cutting forestry practices that are unsustainable lead to mudslides, homes or villages being destroyed, loss of food sources for birds and creatures, and loss of green space and the beauty of ancient trees. Thus, Julia Butterfly Hill sits to save a particular redwood, or a tree-hugging movement in India arises. Clearly, vastly different experiences regionally, culturally, and economically are involved with issues that impact environment and the common good. Exploring these differences or reviewing many of them is not the focus here. Rather, it is the awareness that women’s advocacy has long been a critical factor in the care of Earth, community, and family across the globe, often inspired by a religious imagination. In taking up a study of place, one quickly encounters that some writings and thoughts about place focus on the justice elements of relating to where we live in the world, social and/or environmental. Others focus on the spiritual canvas—the spirit of the land, the people, the environment, culture, ecological diversity, and beauty. And yet others integrate all of these in an interdisciplinary canvas that attends to land, people, economics, and religious imagination. There is a field of study which works with these intersections: ecofeminism. Ecofeminist analysis takes a look at social and environmental landscapes with attention to gender and the voices of diverse women. This chapter is an integrative exploration with an ecofeminist theological and ethical lens in place. If religion is at its heart a network of relationships with the sacred, oneself, one another, and the rest of creation that shares much of our DNA, then place matters. Place is the network of relationships in which we live and move and have our being. Whether place is defined as an affection for home

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or sense of connection to where one lives, and more broadly and ecologically to this planet that shelters us, then place matters. After all, our sense of home and belonging on the planet in various communities and regions, our negotiation of family, education, economy, ecology, healthcare, prices at the gas pump and vocational callings, the nurture of children, war and peace are all mediated by geographies of place. Our spiritual and moral lives together are fueled by the beauty, fragility, and strength of the human and more-than-human condition. Recently, a wellspring of writing has emerged on themes of place—identity, displacement, migrations, global and democratized senses of place. Diverse local and regional efforts include alternative energy initiatives, watershed restoration, sustainable food and urban garden projects, and arts, music, and dance about place or displacement. What is emerging is a growing attention to the soul of communities, an impulse for more than green— for a ‘‘greening’’ ecological and civic flourishing as citizens of a shared, beloved planet and the creaturely world that has its own inherent worth with us. Included in these lively, broadly encompassing conversations are reflections on the textured cultural, ecological, geographic, economic, and religious marks that create a sustainable quality of life at home in a global world of many local expressions. These conversations are perhaps inspired by Eudora Welty’s invocation. Welty petitioned, after all, a certain angel she named, with the literary authority of a fiction writer and essayist, the angel of place. She is, this angel of place, something of a postmodern archetype of journey, rooting, and winged quest, a figure of hope as difficult issues are addressed in the interest of a transformative dream for the human condition and a symbol of our time. And a messenger that harkens us to reflect on her meaning. Make no mistake, it is not easy. The politics of place intersect with diverse religious world views and access to resources, immigrant and refugee stories, and border struggles that have women working at toxic television manufacturing plants situated right at the edge of streams that run purple or yellow or green, depending on the day, in the name of high-definition television. What practices of place heal and tend the soul of communities? Think of it this way: if place is location, the ‘‘where’’ of our collective lives, ‘‘the crossroads of circumstance, the proving ground of ‘What happened? Who’s here? Who’s coming?’ . . . the heart’s field,’’ as Welty explained,3 then how do we think of the heart field of our own lives and our own sense of place in a world that seems more fragile and in need of care as each of us reads the news and learns more about the intricate balance of our climate, ecology, and world political, religious, and economic playing field? How might we begin to chart more tender ground to sustain (take care of) the landscape of this field that is human and environmental, or more-than-human? This phrase,

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more-than-human, has come to be common usage in environmental studies. More-than-human means human communities and the ecology and geography that makes up plants, animals, soil, water, and the more-than-human world. A sustainable community and planet requires health in all areas of the human and more-than-human condition.

SUSTAINING PLACES AND PRACTICING SUSTAINABILITY The contemporary discourse on place, into which writings of hooks, Walker, and Welty fit, includes theoretical works oas well as poetry, fiction, and the annals of experienced community advocates and grass-roots organizers. In my work as a religious studies scholar studying place in ecofeminist ethics and theology, I have at times rued the exponential formulations of sustainability. One can access UN documents alone and search out dozens, if not hundreds, of approaches to sustainability. There are many views and differing opinions, and it certainly makes for an often unwieldy map of approaches! Some scholars have helped to chart the contours of the landscape, counting the definitions of sustainability, locating consistency and inconsistency among these, and systematizing these attempts to articulate what it takes to sustain flourishing well-being in local and global place— such as clean air and water, just labor practices, gender equity and intercultural exchange that is mutual, imaginative, and creative, with community stakeholders partnering mutually for win/win outcomes. In the end, sustainability is generally observed locally in grass-roots contexts where there is flourishing quality of life—flourishing economy, environment, healthcare, families, race relations, religious lives, etc. And in the end, those writing about places are generally wisdom figures who point toward practices that promote sustainability. These spiritual practices and best practices for building sustainable communities integrate the social and environmental life of the places we live. You could say we all ‘‘practice place.’’ The geographer, Yi-Fu Tuan, puts it differently. He describes a ‘‘narrative making of place,’’ telling a new or memoried story, often through the arts, and with prophetic religious, environmental, and cultural imagination. In northern California, for example, a network of restauranteurs like Alice Waters, foodies who love local gourmet food, and environmentalists banded together, inspired to save the dairy farms and the land near a national seashore landmark, Pt. Reyes. This has led to a creative outpouring of services and sustainable tourism that has boosted the local economy, protected great beauty, and given rise to a number of women entrepreneurs who make outstanding cheese and understand this work, in some cases, as a spiritual practice as well as a community service. Others lead pilgrimages to bring people to conflicted sites orshare hidden histories

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of slave trading routes,immigration pathways, or Japanese American internment camps. This type of outreach to places supports a healing of community memory, intergenerational healing in families, and a deepening of regional intercultural life by educating allies in the community. Joanne Doi, a theologian at the Franciscan School of Theology at the Graduate Theological Union, works extensively in this area. Indeed, with regard to women’s advocacy in the narratives of places, Giovanna Di Chiro, a feminist ethicist, underscores that it is at the level of grass-roots activism, particularly amongst women, that a leap has been made to link social and environmental justice—through place.4 These activities involve a world view shift—thinking about sustaining communities, cultures, ecological andeconomic systems, and expressions of beauty and art. The way we think about place and the way we practice place are deeply interrelated. How does this work? Church women in New Orleans thought the children remaining immediately after Hurricane Katrina (not many children stayed in the early recovery period) should have Valentine’s cards and books (five months after the levees broke and the entire Gulf Area was under siege and without basic services). Not all the stores were opened yet. A place that would welcome children should have books and cards, they thought, and so they networked with women’s groups from Connecticut to Florida, and beyond, to bring resources in. Rural and urban realities are not unalike. In a study contrasting individualistic and communitarian world views in rural contexts, feminist geographer, Janel Curry argues that world view has material impact on place, practices, and outcomes, including the level of diversity and economic strength in a community. The rural communities in the United States that she studied, moreover, led to findings that suggest that when communities hold religious world views (without regard to specific tradition), they seem to fare better on the indicators for quality of life and thriving economy.5 Practicing place involves assessing strengths and addressing needs— urban, rural, suburban, global. The upbuilding and celebration of sustainable communities boldly name and claim beauty—celebrating geography, natural landscapes, creatures, human kindness, and cooperation in a great variety of diverse regional and global networks. At the same time as celebrating the goodness of what is and has been, practices of place also name injustice. Practicing place requires restorative justice and vision for what might be possible. It involves advocacy and partnerships to craft social and environmental healing. Thus history and novel change are simultaneously a part of the project of place. In the end, I am suggesting here that sustainability or sustaining places, can be understood as community care within a confluence of environmental, social, cultural, economic, political, religious, arts, and policy landscapes.

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FOUR BENCHMARK PRACTICES: ENGAGING SACRED SENSES OF PLACE As we have explored here, there are many practices of place in the areas of healing, regional culture and ecology, support and advocacy for displacements and migrations, and attention to beauty. These practices spring up at church and within faith-based groups, small businesses, interest groups, and social networks where people gather to care for the Earth and community. They are guided by a desire to do justice, to practice kindness and compassion. It would do well for us to study a spirituality of place more thoroughly for insights. Enter Alice Walker, Eudora Welty, and bell hooks to give voice with angelic herald, messengers, I suggest, of the vital themes for sustainable practices of place. These themes are so tremendously interwoven that they have a resonance, ultimately amplifying one another. Something of a chorus emerges, as in a Greek morality play or a virtues approach to ethics that addresses the moral canvas in terms of what qualities a society most needs to promote good. This chorus emerges with distinctive harmonies from each of these women writers, for their styles, lenses, audiences, and genres are quite different. The common ground they share, with my voice as a scholar and writer engaging this dialogue, is an abiding spirituality of place. In teaching about these themes over the years in theology and ethics coursework, I have often asked students to watch for news headlines and community events, as well as art exhibits, movies, music and dance that tell stories about a spirituality of place and the marks of sustainability locally and globally—environmentally, economically, politically, culturally. They are often surprised at the volume of examples they begin to find, particularly in the area of women in regional arts and culture, in agriculture and food, and in community organizing around environmental racism and ecological restoration. These kinds of projects are so prolific—whether one is on the east or west coasts of the United States or in global contexts—that they became the sources of inspiration that led me as a scholar to look to writers like Wendell Berry and later a cadre of sisters, women writers, who share an exploration of place, a care for God’s world and people, and a love of land. Writers about place help give a rich vocabulary to look at the sacred in everyday life. Along the way I have been graced to make this the focus of my writing, and the themes you are about to read come from my own life and study about women in organic farming and about the role of a religious sense of place and sustainability. This said, a word is in order about why the following four themes are given prominence here.. As each is explored in turn—healing, regional

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culture and ecology, supports and advocacy for displacements and migrations, and attention to beauty—the three women writers we are exploring here are given a moment at the microphone, as it were, for their perspectives. Linking them is my voice and analysis as a feminist theologian, occasionally bringing others into the conversation to deepen it. What motivates my selection of these four themes, rather than a different set of three or four vital components of a sacred sense of place, is my own experience studying the toxic effects of chemical farming in the life of family members’ affected by various cancers related to those farming practices, the diminishing green spaces of farms and forests as rural land and culture shrinks in many parts of the United States, and my grandmother’s quiet though bold and creative advocacy for women who farm. My journey led me to a focus on the religiosity of place as I sought to learn more about why my grandmother felt closest to God in nature, why my experience from a rural context had so much resonance with colleagues from around the world in developing countries, why urban environmental advocacy has parallels with rural experiences, why displacement is somehow wrapped into a sense of place, why social and environmental healing work is related to religious life (in subtle ways that are ancient as metaphors of the tree of life), and why an interfaith and intercultural spirituality of beauty matters to the soul of the world in our time. I discovered along the way that writers, geographers, ecofeminist thinkers,theologians, environmentalists, and sustainability experts all had similar questions. The four themes here are not unique to my experience. Healing land and ceasing social violence, care for community, compassion for what has been lost with grace to support finding a new sense of place in times of change or conflict, and praise for the beauty of creation can be traced to our scriptures and to our saints ancient and contemporary—from St. Francis and St. Clare to Rachel Carson who sparked the environmental movement in the 1960s with her publication of Silent Spring. I present these four themes here with contemporary wisdom figures as guides to explore one framework for religious marks of place and sustainability. May this analysis of these writers’ insights, with examples from women in the community, spark interest in their extraordinary work on place! Their very different voices articulate facets of religious life needing attention in our time: place in terms of healing, regional culture and ecology, displacements and migrations, and spiritualities of beauty with a felt, embodied religious imagination. In the end, surely these four overlapping marks of sacred senses of place and sustainable world views only gesture toward the many other angels of our better nature that also must be named and practiced by each of us within our communities of accountability.

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HEALING Alice Walker’s essay, ‘‘The Universe Responds, or, How I Learned We Can Have Peace on Earth,’’ describes a series of events with the morethan-human world of animals and plants.6 These experiences find Walker in communion with nature, a physical world she heralds divine. In ways unexpected, playful, and poignant, Walker shines in this piece as a consummate storyteller, a peace activist and bard. Her narratives of place include the story of a graceful black dog needing attention and affection that just ambled right into her home one evening as though invited and the story of wildflowers on the hillside of her home that genuinely, mysteriously, grew by leaps and bounds more lush after Walker exclaimed aloud how beautiful they were. From these experiences, Walker arrives at a sense of place that is so mutually responsive across species of nature’s community in God, or whatever name the sacred in life is called, that she concludes ‘‘we have the power, as all the Earth’s people’’ to heal by engaging with the creatures and natural life of this blue-green home in which we live and move and have our being.7 ‘‘Knock and the door shall be opened. Ask and you shall receive. Whatsoever you do to the least of these, you do also unto me - and to yourself. For we are one.’’8 Healing is a theme to which bell hooks turns as well, exploring ways that connection to the Earth is healing, specifically in the African American community that has experienced historic and violent separations from kin and land: For many years, and even now, generations of black folks who migrated north to escape life in the south, returned down home in search of spiritual nourishment, a healing, that was fundamentally connected to reaffirming one’s connection to nature, to a contemplative life where one could take time, sit on the porch, walk, fish, and catch lightning bugs. If we think of urban life as a location where black folks learned to accept a mind/body split that made it possible to abuse the body, we can better understand the growth of nihilism and despair in the black psyche. And we can know that when we talk about healing that psyche we must also speak about restoring our connection to the natural world.9

Here hooks argues for a connection to the Earth as a religious practice of wholeness and cultural as well as ecological healing of post-slave experience trauma in community memory. She gives advocacy for connection with nature to support wellness and quality of life. Both Alice Walker and bell hooks describe practices of place that connect—and are healing. Walker recounts practices of peace, racial respect, and exquisite care of all species. Living with attention to one’s

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surroundings, she suggests, cultivates a generous and compassionate way of engaging the world. In healing the postmodern rift between intellect and soma, mind and body, particularly in the black psyche, hooks also writes about gardening as a spiritual practice, including container gardening even in the most urban of contexts, to reconnect with the Earth and regain a sense of place. Eudora Welty, the venerable novelist from Jackson, Mississippi, wrote in her famous essay on place that ‘‘place heals the hurt, soothes the outrage, fills the terrible vacuum’’ that human beings make.10 For Welty the practice of place is a writer’s call and duty, to craft narrative so compelling with sense of place so deeply present that the novel has the capacity to heal, to illumine, to show the possibilities and hope, tragedy and humor, that are wrapped up in our human sense of place in the world. The healing function of place, and for place, is deeply at the heart of the sustainable world view put forth by these women. While a variety of ways of understanding healing are evoked by each writer, each speaks of a profound network of relationships, justice and mutuality, flourishing joy and well-being, and restored connections with the Earth and one another as benchmarks of sacred place. Healing practices of place play out in a variety of ways in the community. For example, in a town outside of Atlanta, African American church women who for decades had a florist club that brought flowers and food for homecoming funeral services in the community. They recognized a geographic configuration of related causes of death with very particular cancers in their community. Not knowing anything at all about environmental racism or the situating of toxic wastes or placement of communities over uncleared toxic matter, they sleuthed and learned, advocated in city and state government, and won. Many neighbors and allies join now in leading environmental tours of the neighborhoods to share with others what a few church women and friends can do. Ellen Spears, who tells the story of Newtown, Georgia, observes ‘‘as the neighbors go forward, they are fueled by the faith and action of strong women and men.’’11

REGIONAL CULTURE AND ECOLOGY The abiding ties to regional culture and ecological senses of place put forth by bell hooks are embedded in her advocacy for gardening as a practice of place. She links this practice to felt, historical memory of healing, sustaining elements of the rural south for black farmers in the post-Civil War period before the Great Migration north to industrial and urbanizing locations. ‘‘Living in modern society, without a sense of history, it has been easy for folks to forget that black people were first and foremost a people of the

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land, farmers. It is easy for folks to forget that at the first part of the twentieth century, the vast majority of folks lived in the agrarian south.’’12 Sustainability, then, for hooks, and a sustainable world view informing practices of making new sacred place, is deeply tied to an element of ongoing relationship with nourishing region-based cultural practices in migration. ‘‘When we love the earth, we are able to love ourselves more fully.’’13 This tie to the earth speaks of ecology tied to culture, precisely the marks of place and senses of sacred place. Walker’s approach to region and ecology is rooted in her sense of place and experience with the ecosystems of her geographic location as a writer. Recounting the evening the dog seeking refuge ambled into her front door, Walker explores a profound regional and environmental relationship in a sustainable world view that ultimately binds the local and the global, plants and creatures, with the sacred: I think I am telling you that the animals of the planet are in desperate peril, and that they are fully aware of this. No less than human beings are doing in all parts of the world, they are seeking sanctuary. But I am also telling you that we are connected to them at least as intimately as we are connected to trees. Without plant life human beings could not breathe. Plants produce oxygen. Without free animal life I believe we will lose the spiritual equivalent of oxygen. 14

Walker’s approach to sacred place and kin is a deeply felt relational commentary on human and environmental sustainability with resonance to Welty’s invocation of place as the ‘‘heart’s field.’’ Walker addresses ecological systems and intersecting bioregional networks in the proving ground of location—and the field of heart extending to the more-than-human-world in her analysis. This kind of attention to the heart’s field of region as well as backyard; cultural memory and ecological well-being, and economic viability as well, is emerging in very practical ways in communities. For example, the chef who revolutionized ‘‘California cuisine’’ and has mentored many of the top chefs in the United States has inspired many others by the example of her locally grown artisan approach to fine food at her Berkeley restaurant. The acclaimed Chez Panisse is ensconced in a food mecca locals affectionately call ‘‘gourmet ghetto’’ in north Berkeley. As a young doctoral student studying sustainable agriculture, social and environmental ethics, and cultural geography, I visited some of the community garden projects in San Francisco, which at the time were growing French radishes for Chez Panisse,using organic approaches. The garden project focused on the care of souls as well as tender care of the Earth. One of the gardens was housed at a prison south of the city, part of a horticultural therapy program that was successful in

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reducing the incidence of return jail time (the technical term is reduced recidivism rates) for those participating in the garden project. Today, backed by $3.8 million in startup funds from the Chez Panisse Restaurant Foundation, the Berkeley Unified School District is participating in an academic program bringing gardening, nutrition, and preparation of wholesome and delicious food from radishes to chard to children. It is a novel interdisciplinary approach that includes math lessons and links to local farms; the goal is ultimately to replicate the edible schoolyard and lunch initiatives involved in the project that have hopes to raise children’s ‘‘ecoliteracy’’ (their ecological education) as well as contribute to good nutrition that will make an impact on the youth obesity crisis. This kind of approach is beginning to emerge in Europe as well, and with success. If one were to map the carbon footprint of a tomato grown in California and shipped by truck nearly 3,000 milesacross the country, compared to the tomato grown in an Ohio backyard container garden, the results would be a stunning math ‘‘word problem’’ to illuminate how it is more cost effective in terms of fuel, and in terms of environmental footprint, to visit a farmer’s market locally and teach children about gardening. Waters, a Montessori teacher before opening Chez Panisse in 1971, has a vision. Some churches are beginning to share this kind of vision and offer the community the church backyard as a pick-up point for boxes of locally grown vegetables for community-supported agriculture. People, often in an urban area, pay a weekly fee, for example, $15, and receive a box of vegetables (and sometimes fruit), a bouquet of flowers, or fresh picked nuts from trees on the farm one is helping to sustain. Recipes and a newsletter about how the farm is doing, and what new crops are being tried out, often grace the box. Some call this the ‘‘foodshed,’’ a food chain from growers to retailers to our homes. The Buddhist monk, Thich Nhat Hanh, with the nun he has described as a living ‘‘bodhisattva’’ (one committed to help all beings), Sister Chan Khong, once gave a walking meditation retreat to thousands at Spirit Rock Meditation Center. Each person was given an apple. Thich Nhat Hanh proceeded to tell the story of that apple, the trees that grew it, the birds that live in those trees, the sunshine and water that nurtured the trees, the hillside that housed the trees, the farm that housed the hillside, the people and their children who lived on the farm. Sister Chan Khong chanted a beautiful meditation practice, Touching the Earth. Then, the thousands on retreat walked, breathed, and ate the apple with gratitude for the beauty and the bounty of the Earth. This notion of the cosmic unity of sky, earth, tree, field, neighbors, and one’s own body is also understood as a concept of stewardship of water, or ‘‘watershed’’ that is the network of streams, creeks, and rivers that feed our oceans and provide water for drinking and habitats for sea otters and whales. In fact, some churches, synagogues, and temples have

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become involved in watershed restoration as a part of their regional spiritual ecology. A good example is St. John’s Episcopal in Montclair, California, following the religious experience of a woman in the congregation who felt God calling her to care for a stream (which at the time none realized had its head or beginning beneath the church grounds). It is clear that spiritual practices that celebrate and educate about the interconnectedness of human life, ecology, and nature are vital services to a sense of place and community.

ATTENTION TO DISPLACEMENTS AND MIGRATIONS Displacements in the social and historical landscape occur in both tragic and graced circumstances, as do migratory pathways of persons, communities, species. Some commentary is in order here for a theme already surfaced directly by bell hooks and implicitly by Alice Walker. Journalistic reporting on war, genocide, policy failure, and natural disasters increasingly engages the term displaced to speak of persons and communities who have lost homes and tangible as well as intangible vital needs and sustaining roots. Ties to music and regional culture are described with a kind of love and passion amongst those rebuilding in New Orleans, for example, in the same breath as vital, basic needs: food, water, shelter, presence or absence of beloved persons and animals, picture albums, political landscapes, and status of live oak trees. And then there are those in Diaspora, who could not return. In environmental studies circles, the idea of a sense of place, or, ‘‘being placed’’ in the local-global world is frequently contrasted with the displacements of ecological communities, bioregions, and plant and wildlife species. Pilgrimage studies and queer studies explore public sacred space and the ritual memorializing of sites of conflict, honor and memory, or protest. These sites memorialize or have historic ties to displacement or silenced stories. Examples include the NAMES quilt project; Tiananmen Square; Japanese American internment sites, indigenous, Native American sites, and native Hawaiian sites. These public sites marking displacement become sacred places about which the language of place and sense of place, as well as community narratives of identity, celebration, healing, and restoration of justice are invoked. While I am not suggesting conflating the notions of migration, Diaspora, and displacement, I am proposing that these experiences have slippage and overlap. So too do pilgrimages to revered sacred sites or conflicted sites that bring healing through revisiting. Experiences of ‘‘displace’’ stand in exquisite tension with place and place-making, place-finding practices as individuals, communities, and species of nature search and create new senses of place and direction against all odds. hooks, Walker, and Welty address in different ways the tension between place, displacement, migratory journeys, and sense of place. This necessarily

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involves grappling with personal and communal experience involving both tragedy and injustice, the potential for well-being and welcome, and the possibilities for mutual exchange and sustainability. For Welty, clarity comes in the writer leaving one home, finding another, and sometimes returning with a fresh gaze that is never singular. ‘‘There must surely be as many ways of seeing a place as there are pairs of eyes to see it.’’15 Multiple homes might be present in a lifetime; Welty explains ‘‘there may come to be new places in our lives that are second spiritual homes.’’16 Welty’s observations suggest a practice of attending to place as a lifelong spiritual practice with the ease with which Walker articulates a global sense of identity with local practices of peacemaking and place making for others (human and more-than-human), from a ‘‘heart field’’ of connection and care in the face of displacements. ‘‘We are indeed the world. Only if we have reason to fear what is in our own hearts need we fear for the planet. Teach yourself peace. Pass it on.’’17 Walker’s broader argument in this charge identifies our place in the Universe as a relational, mutually responsive process with one another and the Earth. What is affirmed and sought after will be multiplied, thus if sustainability, or peace, is the goal,, it will be found; alternatively, if genocide, or war, is supported, this too will multiply. bell hooks offers another strategy for practices of place that counters displacement and supports a sustainable world view with cultural and personal flourishing. She puts her focus on attending to the body in the black community, celebrating the senses, and reconnecting to the physical world of nature as an antidote to racism as well as modern and postmodern industrial and urban displacements. Wherever black folks live we can restore our relationship to the natural world by taking the time to commune with nature, to appreciate the other creatures who share this planet with humans. Even in my small New York City apartment I can pause to listen to birds sing, find a tree and watch it. We can grow plants—herbs, flowers, vegetables. Those novels by AfricanAmerican writers (women and men) that talk about black migration from the agrarian south to the industrialized north describe in detail the way folks created space to grow . . . . In the past few years, I found that I can do it—that many gardens will grow, that I feel connected to my ancestors when I can put a meal on the table of food I grew. I especially love to plant collard greens. They are hardy, and easy to grow.18

Gardening is a spiritual practice of place that returns again and again in hooks’ observations, in the passage above, as a conduit linking hooks to her ancestors. The role of history and collective memory, and enduring connection with the ancestors, is an enormous arena of reflection in all the literatures of place, particularly ecofeminist philosophy and theology. hooks

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makes the connection directly: ‘‘Collective black self-recovery takes place when we begin to renew our relationship to the earth, when we remember the way of our ancestors. When the earth is sacred to us, our bodies can also be sacred to us.’’19 The Latin American ecofeminist, Ivone Gebara, is resonant with this assertion by her sister from the north, writing of the power of community, memory, body, land, and water as basic needs from a Brazilian urban context.20 A Lutheran minister from Brazil, now assistant bishop in the south of the country in a small town and rural context, Rev. Marcia Blasi, took a course I taught on ecofeminist theology and place. Coming from a ministry focused on women’s justice issues, healing and finding senses of place from experiences of fragmentation and displacements, Marcia created a quilt to accompany her final paper on the power of story to remember individual and community soul. She found in the making of quilts a metaphor for the sharing of places and displacements, ancestors and diverse cultural fabrics as well as geographic regions, as the materials of the quilt came to etch the lives and land of the landless and the hopes and dreams of families. Her husband, Mauro De Soza, a homiletics scholar, wrote his dissertation on a homiletics of hope, and this couple thinks, writes, teaches, and does community work about finding place in a complex global and environmental context, inspired by a religious identity that insists that hope is found in sharing a sense of place and hearing stories about places as a profoundly sacred act. The marks of sacred place and practices of place with a sustainable world view as a lens of reflection guiding action discussed thus far are clearly interwoven. The preceding reflections on healing, regionalism and ecology, and a response to displacements and social, political, and economic migrations intersect on nearly every point. Themes of beauty and spirituality have already surfaced, and turning to them with a focused gaze, it could be argued that, in the end, themes of beauty and spirituality ground the entire discourse on place.

SPIRITUALITY OF BEAUTY—A FELT AND EMBODIED RELIGIOUS IMAGINATION Oddly, the word ‘‘beauty’’ rarely appears as a direct reference in the particular essays studied, though it is invoked and beckoned. For Walker, beauty rises in response to the natural world. She imparts a charge of intimacy and celebration of the beauty of place: To some people who read the following there will seem to be something special or perhaps strange about me . . . . To others, however, what I am about to write will appear obvious. I think our response to ‘‘strangeness’’ or ‘‘specialness’’ depends on where we are born, where we are raised,

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how much idle time we have had to watch trees (long enough at least to notice there is not an ugly one among them) swaying in the wind. Or to watch rivers, rainstorms, or the sea.21

Here, Walker describes a spiritual practice of perceiving beauty. Also reflecting on beauty and the black experience of embodiment, the wounds of slavery and racism, bell hooks analyzes Toni Morrison’s displaced character, Miss Pauline, in the ground-breaking novel, The Bluest Eye—articulating a spirituality of sense of place, recovery of beauty and body, and relationship with the Earth. 22 Eudora Welty argues for a recovery of all feeling and memory tied to a place. She gestures toward beauty revealed by the angel of place even in the tension of the healing power of that beauty. She writes of the power of feelings celebrating place as a spiritual practice. ‘‘Feelings are bound up in place . . . so irretrievably and so happily are recognition, memory, history, valor, love, all the instincts of poetry and praise, worship and endeavor, bound in place.’’23 For Welty, feeling and place, memory and history, the tragic and the humorous, the ongoing quest to move the human spirit forward, is a practice of worship. Her poetic outpouring speaks to beauty and feeling, a sense of the motion of becoming, and felt experience that is the project and practice of place. Walker charges that, where our feelings and prayers and attention go, place is crafted, defined, and contoured. She suggests the spiritual practice of place that blesses and sustains sacred place is recognizing that all places are sacred: I remember when I used to dismiss the bumper sticker, ‘‘Pray for Peace.’’ I realize now that I did not understand it, since I also did not understand prayer; which I know now to be the active affirmation in the physical world of our inseparableness from the divine; and everything, especially the physical world, is divine. War will stop when we no longer praise it . . . peace will come wherever it is sincerely invited. Love will overflow every sanctuary given it.24

Welty also writes of a sacred power, though not in the language of sanctuary or divine presence. Welty calls it a mystery, in the celebration of feelings about place, most often narrated in the arts, with a power that is a force for the peace and social well-being to which Walker also speaks. ‘‘Mutual understanding in the world being nearly always, as now, at low ebb, it is comforting to remember that it is through art that one country can nearly always speak reliably to one another.’’25 What binds all the arts, Welty explains, is place: ‘‘one element . . . is surely the underlying bond that connects all the arts with place. All of them celebrate its mystery.’’26 And this celebration is a spiritual

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practice, presumably from Welty’s inclusive horizon, at the heart of the human and thus interfaith religious imagination. She adds that from the dawn ‘‘place has enshrined the spirit.’’27 Some have found a spirit of place, an angel of place, in rural landscapes with animals who are cared for with dignity and fields that preserve open spaces. The cheese artisans mentioned in the opening of this chapter, ‘‘Cowgirl Creamery,’’ are committed to preserving rural landscapes in Marin County, California, near a national seashore area called Pt. Reyes. They recognize that one of the ways to practically, concretely, share the beauty and get folks out into it, is through ecotourism that is sustainable and supports the local economic practices of farming (in this instance, dairy farming and artisan cheese making). ‘‘Farmstead cheese from small-scale producers always has a story, quite unlike commodity cheeses, and can be compared to making fine wine. It is possible to name the cheesemaker, identify the pasture where the animals grazed, and to name the breed of cow, sheep or goat whose milk was used. Artisan cheese comes with a sense of place, ecological values, and a unique relationship between the artisan and the raw materials.’’28 While for years I have trekked to Pt. Reyes to be with the waves, the whales, and wildflowers in the spring, the land and the farmland harkening to my own rural roots, some make the journey to wine country nearby in Sonoma, and cheese country in Marin and beyond, and are surprised by the beauty and fall in love with something green—they begin to recognize and cultivate in urban backyards, too. Not surprisingly, rural sociologists are finding in the United States and Europe that a commitment to sustainability is often rooted in a religious world view, a sense of the sacred in places, a desire to share and preserve this, and to celebrate the arts, crafts, and foods that seem to go along with local and regional cultures as they evolve and engage globally.

CONCLUSION Surely place induces poetry, and when the poet is extremely attentive to what is there, a meaning may even attach to [her] poem out of the spot of the earth where it is spoken, and the poem may signify the more because it does so wholly out of its place, and the sap has run up into it as into a tree.29 —Eudora Welty

Healing. Regional Culture and Ecology. Attention to Displacements and Migrations. Spirituality of Beauty—a Felt and Embodied Religious Imagination. The interdisciplinary boundaries among these four benchmarks attending to sacred senses of place and sustainable world views explored in this

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small study only heighten the need for ongoing multidisciplinary and collaborative reflection. The marks of place and sustainable world views studied here are partial. And the voices of women writing about place studied here—bell hooks, Alice Walker, and Eudora Welty—are powerful. Along with figures such as Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, and others, including the poet Mary Oliver, the placemaking works of these women include implicit statements about the nature of our religious lives,rooted in the everyday world and inhabiting the places we love and take care of in community. This exploratory survey has been more evocative than exhaustive, seeking to inspire interfaith and interdisciplinary dialogue on the care of Earth, care of the soul, and local and regional culture. So much more needs to be written about religiosity articulated as place and sustainable world view in the arts, in community projects, and in the role and leadership of women envisioning the social and environmental common good with religious imagination. The lesser angel of place, as Welty calls her (or perhaps a host of angels of place?) has much more to say to us than can be said here, by these interlocutors or this author. Allowing for something of Welty’s whimsy and gravitas to extend into the broader conversations on place this chapter engages in, I imagine the angel of place has a muse, and she is the saint of sustainability. If I were an artist, I would paint the angel of place in neoclassical peasant style befitting my rural European, Irish, and German roots as an ecofeminist scholar. In this rendering, the angel of place would become angels of place. A host of multihued angels would carry the Earth in an orb containing the cosmos and stars. Imagine painted above the angelic host, a saint, or muse perhaps, of sustainability, depicted as a luminous owl circling above; holding aloft many pairs of spectacles, indeed, spectacles, on a cord woven of silver, gold, and green. The spectacles symbolize robust approaches to sustainable world views, and the capacity to see with local, global, and interspecies lenses. The host of angels below symbolize the multitude of community activists and interdisciplinary approaches needed to explore the many landscapes of sustainability. Stated without the use of art and metaphor, the particular focus of this interdisciplinary ecofeminist analysis has been the voice of only some of the women and allies in literary and regional sustainable community building circles who are practicing place as cultural and environmental meditations. These women are bridging the nature/culture dualism through poetic invocations of sacred place linking nature and culture across time and herstory. It is my hope that this exploration will spark further and more contextual studies on place across the disciplines. It has certainly sparked my own project defining place as a toposophic project, that is, looking at place as a confluence of intersecting landscapes that each bear profound wisdom and together create a divine matrix for our lives (toposophia). In other words, ecological

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landscapes intersect with social landcapes, education intersects with health, geography intersects with culture and religion and economics. Each of these landscapes holds wisdom that is stitched together and ‘‘storied’’ together, and must be understood relationally. The geographer whose work has so inspired me, Yi-Fu Tuan, has identified a sense of connection to place as topophilia. Philia, Greek for soul friendship, in this usage indicates friendship with place.. Building on this, I have come to think of moments of deep connection to places as toposophia. Sophia, Greek for Wisdom, is used here to speak to the wisdom of place. Perhaps Welty would have said it like this: there is wisdom to be found in addressing this lesser angel of place to see what she might have to say to us! I would put it like this: each of us experiences iconic moments when landscapes natural and cultural are gathered up together with beauty, joy, right power relationships, and flourishing well-being in local and global landscapes. Icons are said to be windows of heaven. Place, the where of our spiritual life, can be a window to heaven. When places are vulnerable or harmed, they become a window to petition heaven. Toposophia—a motivating taste, touch, and fragrance—the wisdom of places.30 Inspired by hooks, Welty, and Walker, as well as the case studies that have illustrated these themes, a working definition for place I propose for readers to take with them for further reflection follows. It is a study in contrasts, much inspired by themes of community and memory, loss and finding, beauty and story, healing and cultural life, and abiding desire for well-being ecologically in our day. It has a focus on practice, on the ongoing way that places are shaped and made, and the bodily aspect of place. Think of mountains, water, your feet on the ground, the way events happen in the world and impact where you live, the way you respond to them with others. Put feelings into the picture. Stir. A recipe for place emerges: Place is an unfolding intersection of bodied, memoried time and space, relationally embedded in physical and cultural landscapes; mediated by contoured and contouring narratives of affection, desire, loss, love, and beauty; requiring moral care and a religious imagination as it impacts individual identity and community life and practice socially, environmentally, geographically, and economically. The ecofeminist implications of the need for a sense of place for our social and environmental ethics are many. As we have explored here, they involve the quality of life for individual and community, and the human and more-than-human world. What would a yardstick for quality of life look like, were it to take into account a religious sense of place as we have explored here? A few points are certainly clear: • Community flourishing with a sense of place includes socially just infrastructures of health and education as well as intangible cultural and religious elements.

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• Individual flourishing requires attending to basic needs, including a sense of place. • Ecological and biological flourishing requires places, habitats, the care of land and growing processes, watersheds, bioregions, and the species great and small who live therein. • Economic flourishing requires attention to place, a sense of place and unique cultural practices, and the complex network of relationships that join places locally and globally.

This rubric for quality of life as flourishings in all the landscapes that make up the ‘‘where’’ of life, including the spiritual life, does not correspond in a one-to-one relationship to the benchmarks of place that have been explored in this chapter, but it does correspond qualitatively. Sometimes experience shares better than a dictionary, or even, a new set of definitions added to a dictionary. A brief author’s footnote may help to unpack these concepts more thoroughly. I came to a study of place from the rural farming roots mentioned in a few spots in this chapter. As a young doctoral student, working on environmental ethics, cultural studies, critical race theory, feminist theology, and ecofeminist ethics, with some attention to art and literature, myth and metaphor, in the midst of qualifying exams, I went home to my grandmother’s farm for her funeral. Farming relatives told me to stop working on place, because rural life would be dying within a decade. I went home to my other heart field, Berkeley, and found there students and colleagues from around the world, all convinced of the importance of sorting out global economics, finding right power relations, rediscovering beauty in our time, finding God in the urban landscape, caring for water and soil and sustainable life paths and energy uses. Somehow, it became very clear that my love of the Earth and people connected me to so many places, creatures, habitats, ways of life, all of them so worthy of celebrating. The story of the quest to save my grandmother’s farm after her death mirrors in some ways the quest to find sustainability in our generation, and opened up new and ancient ways of thinking about the world in our religious imagination, with a preciousness of the wildflowers and sparrows that Christ mentioned. So the story of my grandmother’s farm awaits another day, and readers are urged to look at their own grandmothers’ stories. What places did those angels of place make, and what places are you tending now? In the end, we know at least a few things from this exploration. Sense of place is a thematic study. Advocacy for places is a transformational practice. Attention to place is a religious activity. We know that attention to displacements, healing, regional culture-ecology-economics, and beauty, is vital. It may save the world.

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NOTES 1. Eudora Welty, powerful twentieth-century novelist from Jackson, Mississippi, wrote a significant nonfiction essay on the role of place in fiction— that ‘‘lesser,’’ yet neglected angel compared to plot and character. Place is for Welty the ground of art, peaceful exchange between cultures and people through interest and dialogue about regions—environments—way of life. Influencing a cadre of writers with an emphasis on ecological literary criticism and regional fiction, Welty suggests place is ultimately about our human quest to find a sense of home and belonging in the world. Her angel of place suggests a spirit of place, perhaps even—a spirituality of place. ‘‘Place in Fiction’’ was penned in the mid-1950s. See On Writing (New York: Modern Library/Random House, 2002), 39. 2. See Schneiders’ introduction to Belden Lane, Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality (New York: Paulist Press, 1988). 3. Welty, ‘‘Place in Fiction,’’ 42. 4. Giovanna Di Chiro, ‘‘Nature as Community: The Convergence of Environment and Social Justice,’’ in Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in Nature, ed. William Cronon (New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996), 299–321. 5. Janel Curry, ‘‘Community Worldviews and Rural Systems: A Study of Five Communities in Iowa,’’ Annals of he Association of American Geographers 90, No. 4 (December 2000): 693–712. 6. Alice Walker, ‘‘The Universe Responds, or, How I Learned We Can Have Peace on Earth,’’ in At Home on the Earth: Becoming Native to Our Place, A Multicultural Anthology, ed. David Landis Barnhill (Berkeley: University of California Press), 307–12. 7. Alice Walker, ‘‘The Universe Responds,’’ 311. 8. Ibid. 9. bell hooks, ‘‘Touching the Earth,’’ in At Home on the Earth: Becoming Native to Our Place, A Multicultural Anthology, ed. David Landis Barnhill (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 55. 10. Welty, ‘‘Place in Fiction,’’ 58. 11. Ellen Griffith Spears, The Newtown Story: One Community’s Fight for Environmental Justice (The Center for Democratic Renewal and The Newtown Florist Club, 1998), 57. 12. hooks, ‘‘Touching the Earth,’’ 53. 13. Ibid., 51. 14. Walker, ‘‘The Universe Responds,’’ 310. 15. Welty, ‘‘Place in Fiction,’’ 56. 16. Ibid., 57.

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17. Walker, ‘‘The Universe Responds,’’ 312. 18. bell hooks, ‘‘Touching the Earth,’’ 55–56. 19. Ibid., 56. 20. Ivone Gebara, Longing for Running Water (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999). 21. Walker, ‘‘The Universe Responds,’’ 307. 22. hooks, ‘‘Touching the Earth,’’ 53–54. 23. Welty, ‘‘Place in Fiction,’’ 47. 24. Walker, ‘‘The Universe Responds,’’ 311. 25. Welty, ‘‘Place in Fiction,’’ 40. 26. Ibid., 42. 27. Ibid., 47. 28. See http://www.cowgirlcreamery.com/. 29. Ibid., 48. 30. Now, certainly wisdom, in the Greek—sophia, has long been explored through the lens of feminist biblical interpretation. Elisabeth Schu¨sler Fiorenza argues the wisdom tradition is a strong framework for an ecological theology and just practices of place that give advocacy for a deep and participatory democratic process, a movement approach to transformative social change within wisdom’s open house. She writes of wisdom as ‘‘a cosmic figure delighting in the dance of creation, a ‘master’ craftswoman and teacher of justice. She is the leader of her people and accompanies them on their way through history. Very unladylike, she raises her voice in public places and calls everyone who will hear her. She transgresses boundaries, celebrates life, and nourishes those who will become her friends. Her cosmic house is without walls and her table is set for all.’’ Drawing from Fiorenza, then, toposophia is a transformative love and celebration of place in the cosmic house of space and time, with justice. Elisabeth Schu¨sler Fiorenza, Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001), 27.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Abbas, Ackabar. ‘‘Building on Disappearance: Hong Kong Architecture and Colonial Space.’’ In The Cultural Studies Reade, edited bySimon During, 146-166. New York: Routledge, 1993. Berry, Wendell. The Unsettling of America: Culture and Agriculture. San Francisco: Sierra Club Books, 1977. Bigwood, Carol. Earth Muse: Feminism, Nature and Art. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. Casey, Edward S. Getting Back into Place: Toward a Renewed Understanding of the Place-World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Di Chiro, Giovanna. ‘‘Nature as Community: The Convergence of Environment and Social Justice.’’ In Uncommon Ground: Rethinking the Human Place in

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Nature, edited by W. Cronon, 298–320. New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1996 Gebara, Ivone. Longing for Running Water. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1999. Getz, Arthur. ‘‘Urban Foodsheds.’’ Permaculture Activist 24 (October, 1991): 26–27. Griffith Spears, Ellen. The Newtown Story: One Community’s Fight for Environmental Justice. The Center for Gainesville, GA: Democratic Renewal and The Newtown Florist Club, 1998. hooks, bell. ‘‘Touching the Earth,’’ In At Home on the Earth: Becoming Native to Our Place, A Multicultural Anthology , edited by David Landis Barnhill, 51–56. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Lane, Belden, Landscapes of the Sacred: Geography and Narrative in American Spirituality. New York: Paulist Press, 1988. Meares, Alison. ‘‘Making the Transition from Conventional to Sustainable Agriculture: Gender, Social Movement Participation, and Quality of Life on the Family Farm.’’ Rural Sociology 62, No. 1 (1997): 21–47. Miles, Margaret. Reading for Life: Beauty, Pluralism, and Responsibility. New York: Continuum, 1997. Robb, Carol S. The Rights of Farmers, the Common Good, and Feminist Questions.’’ In Covenant for a New Creation: Ethics, Religion, and Public Policy, edited by Carol S. Robb and Carl J. Casebol, 272–90. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991. Schu¨ssler Fiorenza, Elisabeth. Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001. Severson, Kim. ‘‘Food Joins Academic Menu in Berkeley School District: Credits, Not Calories—Chez Panisse Founder Cooks Up New ‘core curriculum.’ ’’ The San Francisco Chronicle (Sunday, August 29, 2004): page A-1. Sheldrake, Philip. Spaces for the Sacred: Place, Memory and Identity. New York: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001. Snyder, Gary. A Place in Space. Washington, D.C.: Counterpoint Press, 1995. Tuan, Yi-Fu. ‘‘Language and the Making of Place: A Narrative-Descriptive Approach.’’ Annals of the Association of American Geographers 81, No. 4 (1991): 684–96. Walker, Alice. ‘‘The Universe Responds, Or, How I Have Learned We Can Have Peace on Earth.’’ In At Home on the Earth: Becoming Native to Our Place, A Multicultural Anthology, edited by David Landis Barnhill, 307–12. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. Welty, Eudora. ‘‘Place in Fiction.’’ In On Writing. New York: Modern Library/ Random House, 2002, 39–59. Wismer, Susan. ‘‘From the Ground Up: Quality of Life Indicators and Sustainable Community Development.’’ Feminist Economics 5, No. 2 (Summer 1999): 109–14.

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African Women in Traditional Religions: Illustrations from Kenya Mary Nyangweso Wangila

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o write about African women as a category is a daunting task because of the danger of generalizing about their experience. African women come from different and quite exclusive social contexts with unique beliefs and social experiences. This is not to say that their experiences are not similar to some extent. Yet to speak about African women’s experience is to acknowledge the fact that their unique experiences can be interpreted in a way of comparison, within patterns of social experience that are characteristic of African communities. To effectively speak about African women and traditional religion, one needs to examine the roles they play in these religions and highlight the social status accorded to the feminine. This task is also challenging not only because of historical influences Africa has encountered over a period of time, but also because it is difficult to distinguish religious experiences from secular experiences. A renowned scholar of African religions, John S. Mbiti, described this African experience when he observed that Africans are ‘‘notoriously religious.’’ This sentiment was expressed also by the renowned African feminist theologian, Mercy Amba Oduyoye, when she described African women as ‘‘religion’s chief clients.’’1 These two scholars allude to the religious overtones of any African experience, a fact that must be acknowledged in an analysis of African women’s experience. In this chapter, I employ an analytical approach in my

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examination of how women are treated in indigenous religions, where they are so prominent. My intention is to draw from Kenyan stories in comparison with stories from some other African communities, to highlight how religion influences social experience and roles.

RELIGION AND SOCIAL RELATIONS To examine the place of women in African indigenous religions, one needs to interrogate the social context of these women to understand how religions function to shape social relations in society. This is because every society has its culture, and every culture has distinctions between genders, characteristics of which are the conscious goals of socialization. Socialization patterns are different for males and females, and transition rites form part of this socializing pattern. Religious stories about women often are imparted to individuals during the socialization process. These stories instill social stereotypes about and attitudes towards women, ensuring that women maintain their conventional and somewhat suppressed position in society. Yet, it is important to acknowledge that power relations in any given society are complex and often difficult to comprehend. This is not only because of extraordinary cultural diversities that affect the division of female and male roles and activities, but also because of the cultural biases and methodological problems involved in social science research. Some communities are constructed in ways that go beyond Western categories that characterize social science methods. Social relations in some communities present men and women as complementary partners bound together in social units, institutions, and categories that interact and crisscross gender divisions.2 Because of this, cross-gendered relations in a particular social structure should not be assumed to be identical to those in another. Although similarities exist in different social structures, values of a given society must be understood within the framework of that society’s culture in order to appreciate the complexities that inform them. Since African women’s experience draws from a holistic world view, it is important that an analysis of their experience employs a holistic framework. A holistic approach involves the recognition of the fact that the perspective of the social actor matters. This framework also acknowledges the interdependence of all things in the Universe and the role of history in women’s situation. The role of religion in social behavior is fundamental because religious texts and teachings have been presented as two-edged swords. Religion is a complex system that functions in relation to the norms, customs, and ethics of a given society. As sociologist Peter Berger reminds us, by referencing the supernatural (God, divinities, and ancestors), religion endows upon society fear, awe and reverence that cultivates unwavering authority from its

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members.3 Religion is a powerful force in the legitimation of reality because it draws on sacred or divine sources that are nonhuman and deemed supernaturally powerful. Because religion reflects upon the existential—who we are, why we are here, and how we should act—religious systems always address issues of gender status and roles. This social order is maintained by grounding answers to questions about the ‘‘why’’ of institutional arrangements and what ‘‘ought to be’’ in legal and sacred contexts. Religious narratives such as myths, proverbs, taboos, and other ancestral decrees are used to instill fear in believers and sometimes to legitimate physical harm. Violating purported religious decrees can be disastrous, making religion an effective method of instilling fear and enforcing certain customs. As the collective beliefs of a given community, religious narratives make customs normative while having the force of sacred authority to maintain them. What is often forgotten is the fact that quite often the social structure and the needs of any given community shape the function of religion. In other words, religion operates as ‘‘ruling relations’’ tailored to fit the objectives of those dominant in society. These ‘‘ruling relations,’’ which sociologist Dorothy Smith describes as forming the administrative, management, professional, and organizational units in a given society, regulate and control people’s behavior. They are objectified, normalized, and made into systems of knowledge making them complex and dependant upon each other.4 In a patriarchal society for instance, ruling relations define male and female attitudes and consequent behavior in favor of male dominance. Although all participate in the ruling relations, not all benefit equally from them. In African social contexts, to change the social order is to challenge God, the gods, or the ancestors. The fear of challenging such powerful beings prevents many from trying to do so, a powerful guarantee in maintaining the social order. This is because in an African holistic world view, spirituality is a way of life expressed in everyday action. In a holistic world view, all things in the Universe are not only interdependent, but they also have a relational power factor that is referenced in ritual ceremonies and celebrations. The role of religion in the ‘‘creation’’ of the individual must be viewed in a holistic way in order to understand how the woman’s experience is shaped. In Africa, the individual is not only secular, he or she is also religious because the profane is always infused in the sacred. The secular community includes the invisible community— ancestors, divinities, and God. The physical, the metaphysical, and spiritual are considered as a reality that coexists within this framework. As a holistic being, an individual is surrounded by some form of mystery. A mystery that draws from beliefs in gods and ancestors is compounded by the belief that disease, calamity, or misfortunes have mystical causes and that these may be the result of deviation from social prescriptions. Because of this understanding, it is essential to invoke the world beyond during

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secular rites of incorporation to maintain harmony both at the visible and invisible realms. Religion can sanction social order and challenge it as well.

INDIGENOUS RELIGIONS IN KENYA Although indigenous world views are mystical, they are very real to members of various communities in Kenya. Even though those who profess indigenous religion comprise about 10 percent, as Mbiti observed it, indigenous religion continues to influence the lives of many, including converts to Christianity and Islam. Most Kenyan indigenous communities recognize the conception of a supreme god, ancestral spirits and other mystical powers that manifest themselves in witchcraft, sorcery, and misfortunes. The supreme god, who is usually associated with the creation of the Universe, holds a very superior position. Although this being is rarely appealed to directly, he or she is the source of the ultimate power. For instance, the Akamba believe in Mumbi (creator of the Universe), the Kikuyu in Ngai (the creator, ruler, and distributor of gifts to the rich and the poor), the Meru in Murungu (the provider of rain), the Luyia in Wele Nyasaye Khakaba (the distributor of wealth), the Dorobo in Araua (the supplier of their needs), the Kipsigis in Cheptalil (their sustainer), and the Sabei in Oiki (the creator of the Universe).5 In communities where divinities or lesser gods exist, they are perceived to be related to the supreme god in one way or another. Divinities are delegated particular social responsibilities such as fertility, good harvests, rain, and health. In communities where divinities are found, they serve as intermediaries. For instance, among the Dorobo of Kenya, Araua is believed to be a moon goddess and sister of the sun, the supreme god. The Keiyo believe in Ilat, the rain god. The Suk believe in Ilat, the son of the Supreme Being Tororut; Ilat is said to fetch the water that is used by Tororut to make rain. The supreme god and divinities are guardians of morality. In case of moral decay such as violation of taboos, supreme god can cause affliction to victims or the whole community. The supreme god is sometimes believed to be responsible for diseases such as epidemics, drought, famine, mental disturbance, infertility among women, and loss of livestock and fields. In some cases, the supreme god or divinities are believed to use spiritual beings such as ancestors to bring affliction. Sacrifices must be offered to appease the supreme god or ancestors in case of such afflictions. Among the Turkana, for instance, the supreme god is believed to punish those individuals who commit incest or violate the requirements of important rituals with illness or death. The Suk interpret calamities and cattle diseases as the supreme god’s punishment for misdoings. The Kikuyu believe that the supreme god (Ngai) and divinities are responsible for certain misfortunes, such as punishment to those who disobey the supreme god. The supreme

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god may even punish disobedience by famine or even death.6 Given the belief in the punishment for disobedience by the supreme god and divinities, most members of a given community seek to adhere to all moral and social expectations of their communities to avoid disobeying the supreme god and to thereby avoid punishment in the form of misfortune. The belief in ancestral spirits is also central to Kenyan indigenous religions as in African world views in general. This belief explains the destiny of life and general behavior of the living towards the dead. Ancestral spirits are believed to be custodians of a community’s family affairs, traditions, ethics, and moral activities. Any offense in these matters is an offense against the ancestors. Ancestors are dreaded because, if offended, they may cause misfortunes that may include incurable diseases. They are said to get offended by the nonperformance of certain rituals, the violation of taboos, lack of respect to the elderly, and even nonburial of the dead in a traditional way. Diseases are often viewed as punishment for wrongdoing. A cleansing ceremony must be performed in order to avert the anger of the ancestors. Various rites are observed out of respect for one’s ancestors so as to maintain harmony. When happy, ancestors are believed to be a source of blessings such as fertility, healthy life, good harvest, and social stability. They are said to be conduits through which morality is instilled and new ideas are received, interpreted, understood, and accepted. This is a strong source of social legitimation of cultural norms. Spirit possession is a common practice in indigenous religions, because this practice is viewed as a medium of communication through which the ancestors get in touch with the living. Mbiti explains this phenomenon as follows: Spirit possession occurs in one form or another in practically every African society. Yet, spirit possession is not always to be feared, and there are times when it is not only desirable but people induce it through special dancing and through drumming until the person concerned experiences spirit possession during which he [sic] may collapse. When the person is thus possessed, the spirit may speak through him; the role of a medium, and the messages he relays are received with expectation by those to whom they are addressed.7

Although these spirits are concerned with community welfare, they may punish any member for misbehavior. They are said to possess an individual who has offended them, causing him or her mental illness, or they may destroy him or her completely. Among the Luyia, ancestral spirits may caution the community against pending danger. When angry, ancestors are said to punish the offender with misfortune or even death. To appease their anger, a sacrifice must be offered.

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Beliefs in curses, oaths, and taboos continue to be part of Kenyans’ lifestyles. Curses, oaths, and taboos draw their power from the mystical world. Most Kenyan communities believe that anyone who offends the elderly could draw a curse upon herself or himself. In most communities, a curse is effective only when pronounced by an elderly person. Curses are feared mostly when pronounced by close relatives such as family members or extended kinship. A curse by parents to children, or uncles and aunts to their nieces and nephews are feared most because of their potency.8 Although in some cases, curses are believed to be effective even if the victim is unknown, most curses are within family circles. Oaths bind people mystically together. Through an oath, two people who are unrelated undergo a ritual, which usually involves an exchange of blood through drinking or rubbing into the body. This ritual is believed to transform them into real ‘‘blood brothers,’’ a term used to connote their closeness. From then onwards the two individuals relate to each other as brothers or sisters. For instance, children of these individuals cannot intermarry; otherwise they would be considered to be committing incest, a taboo that can lead to misfortunes. During oaths, god(s) or ancestors are called upon to make it binding. The violation of a taboo is believed to bring misfortune. Among the Kikuyu, for instance, a taboo is called megiro. Violation of megiro causes thahu, an illness that is associated with bad luck, a curse, or anger of the ancestors. Thahu emaciates the victim’s body and its symptom may include an attack by boils. If precaution is not taken in good time, thahu may lead to death. In order for a curse or ancestral anger to be averted, a purification ceremony (tahika) must be held. Because of this belief in the mystical world, diviners continue to be important personalities in Kenyan communities. A diviner is believed to possess the appropriate power to cure both the bewitched and the possessed. Diviners may combine roles such as prophet, medium, medicine person, spiritual healer, arbitrator, and rainmaker.9 Since disease is not only taken as a physical health symptom apart from Western medical diagnosis of a health problem, the diviner is usually visited by some Kenyans to establish if there is any other cause of illness that is mystical. In communities where life is associated with mystical power and beings such as ancestors, to dismiss the validity of a diviner is to alienate individuals in these communities from their social realities.

INDIGENOUS STORIES AND WOMEN An analysis of a community’s stories is one way to examine attitudes towards the feminine, including women’s status, role, and spirituality. Kenyans, like most Africans, have depended on oral tradition for a long time; hence they

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have used stories in the form of folktales, myths, and proverbs as a means of communicating a history and general philosophy of life to successive generations. Within these stories are moral codes that are frequently used to instruct individuals on a community’s expectations. Stories entrenched in religious beliefs are authoritative, hence intended to describe what is or ought to be and to ridicule nonprescribed behavior. As sources of guidance, indigenous stories are therefore told for counseling, guidance in decision-making, or for intercessory prayer. Images of characters in folk stories are expected to be a reflection of what is happening in society. In most indigenous religions we encounter stories that define the world in both genders. Most creation stories tell of a supreme god that is either male or female, even though male supreme beings are more predominant. In communities where there is a male deity, there is a female deity that serves either as the supreme god’s wife, sister, or assistant. As noted earlier, communities like the Kikuyu, the Akamba, the Meru, the Kipsigis, the Luyia and the Dorobo recognize the creator of the Universe as being male. However, the Dorobo also recognize Araua—the moon goddess.10 She is believed to be the sister to the supreme god. Elaborate gender complementary stories about god and divinities are found among the Yoruba of Nigeria who believe in a male supreme god—Olodumare. The Yoruba have lesser gods (orishas) among whom we find the feminine goddess—Osun with the title of ‘‘the Great Mother’’—and her sister goddess, Yemonja; both are associated with fertility and riches. Among the Ezon (sometimes written as Ijaw or Ijo) of the southern part of Nigeria, we also encounter a creation myth about a female supreme deity—Woyengi; she also is known as Tamarau, the Great Mother.11 Across Africa, we also find shrines, images, songs, and dances of a water goddess commonly referred to in West Africa as Mami Wata. Mami Wata is pidgin for mother of water. Mami Wata is believed to heal illnesses, especially infertility among women, and she brings prosperity to those who make their living in the waters through fishing or trade. She is usually depicted in sculptures as a beautiful light-skinned woman holding a python around her upper torso. She also wears long hair, a fancy dress, earrings, and necklace. In Kenya, as in other East African countries, the water goddess is portrayed as a light-skinned Euro-American or Arab-looking mermaid, posing seductively next to the ocean while combing her hair and looking into a mirror.12 This complementary representation of gender in African indigenous religions is illustrated by numerous statues of deities found in a number of communities that depict both genders.13 Some statues are depicted in the form of a pregnant woman. Most often female deities are associated with the Earth, quite often ranked second to the supreme god. In some communities, female deities are symbolized by snakes or trees.

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Apart from the complementary representation of gender in the worship of gods, we find numerous festivals honoring the maternal principle as the source of life. This principle is not only considered a source of life, it is also a potential source of destruction. In most Kenyan communities, the maternal principle is celebrated during initiation period, a period when the feminine power is acknowledged and displayed. Among the Marakwet of Kenya, for instance, women take initiation ritual as an opportunity to claim their maternal power, and to ridicule and critique men where they have failed them. Anthropologist Henrietta Moore explains: If a man treats his wife badly, she may call together other women to abuse the man as a warning. Women tie the hands and legs of the man and beat him. Then the man cries out, ‘‘Leave me alone, I’ll give you a goat,—I’ll give you two goats,’’ until women agree. Then the man goes and gives the women one or two he-goats, whatever the man agreed. Then the women slaughter the goats and divide between them.14

The celebration of the maternal principle is common in Africa. For instance, the Yoruba recognize this principle during the annual Gelede festival. In Liberia and Sierra Leone, this principle is depicted by the Water Spirit, Sowei, the guardian divinity of the Sande Women’s Society. This divinity represented in the Sowei mask is believed to depict the invisible spirit of the Sande and to possess potent magical powers that guard ideals of feminine beauty and moral virtues. In general, women are thought to share in the divine creativity through their maternal principle, as depicted in myths and rituals centering on maternity and fertility. It can be argued that the value of the feminine in women’s traditional societies explains the worship of the great goddess and other lesser goddesses. In indigenous religion, women played significant roles as ritual specialists. Traditionally women’s roles included participation in worship, healing, exorcism, and promotion of fertility and success in life’s ventures. Women officiated not only at communal worship, they also participated in community worship as cantors, choristers, gift-bearers, and sometimes as cooks and dancers. In most communities, grandmothers acted as spiritual leaders, guides, teachers, and mentors. Since priesthood was open to both men and women, it was common to find women pouring libation, healing the sick, treating the barren, and offering prayers.15 Women were also believed to be creative and to have mystical powers usually channeled through ritual authority, spirit mediumship, possession, healing, and mythical knowledge. Spirit possession—a common phenomenon in African communities—was not only an indicator of a call to priesthood, but also a therapeutic ritual validating bonds between women, beyond the domestic sphere. Most diviners

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or mediums were women, because they were believed to possess the power of intuition. As mediums, women also acted as intermediaries between people and the spirit worlds. They were concerned with disease, sickness, and misfortunes, which in African experience also were caused by mystical forces. As traditional doctors, women had knowledge of herbs, how to prepare them and how to bring about physical and spiritual healing. It is this skill that enabled them to protect people from witchcraft and sorcery by supplying them with charms and other medication. During rites of passage, women played significant roles. At birth, it was the responsibility of women to serve as midwives and to nurture the mother and the child during the seclusion period associated with the birth of the child. It was also their responsibility to offer prayers of gratitude to God and ancestors at the birth of a child and to name the child appropriately. In some communities, when a child died at birth, it was the women’s responsibility to bury the child. During puberty, women were not only principal officiates and participants in initiation rites. They served as teachers of new initiates, instructing them on matters regarding social responsibility. In communities where female circumcision is practiced, for instance, women are key actors in the circumcision of women. Among the Kikuyu, the Maasai, and the Kalenjin of Kenya, it is the responsibility of women to ensure that young girls are circumcised. This is not different from the Sande community of Sierra Leone, for example, where puberty rites are overseen by a Majo—a headwoman. It is the responsibility of this woman to guide and counsel other women in their community. The power of the Majo is not only cultural, it also includes political influence beyond her village boundaries.16 During marriage, women did not only play significant roles in the procreation and nurturing of children, they were the upholders of their communities’ morals and traditions. It was their responsibility to socialize children to skills required in their communities. In matrilineal communities, like the Kikuyu, women had political power insofar as children are concerned. Since children born in a matrilineal family belonged to the woman, a woman provided her matrilineal family with children. It is probably because of the gender complementarity among the images of the gods that both men and women were allowed to perform sacred functions in the worship of God and his functionaries, the divinities who may be female or male. It is probably because of the value of women in African communities that we find stories about women as leaders in a number of traditional communities. African history is proud of great queens like Amina (1588–1589) who ruled Zazzua, a province of Nigeria and currently known as Zaria. Amina’s reign of 34 years is believed to have been successful due to her military achievements. Candace, empress of Ethiopia (332 BCE), was famous as a military tactician and field commander. Nandi Queen of Zululand (1778–1826),

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the mother of the great leader Shaka Zulu, held a political position. Tiye the Nubian Queen of Kemet (Egypt, circa 1415–1340 BCE) is regarded as the most influential queen ever to rule Kemet. Yaa Asantewa, the queen mother of Ejisu of Ashanti Ghana, is remembered for her courageous decision and fight against the British.17

AFRICAN RELIGIONS AND FEMALE SUBORDINATION Important to note, however, is the fact that even though women in traditional religions were more secure on the basis of gender complementarities than they are today, it would be a misconception to say that traditional societies were not patriarchal. In traditional communities, women had some space in terms of the roles they played in society. Some of these roles though significant were downplayed not because of the patriarchal nature of their culture, but because of the way religion has legitimized these roles. In Kenya, most communities embrace an ideology of male dominance over women even as this is practiced differently. Most people are broadly patrilineal, tracing descent through the paternal line. Even though there were incidences of matrilineality, like among the Kikuyu, matrilineality does not denote matriarchy. For instance, while matrilineality was a source of honor for women as among the Kikuyu community of Kenya and among the Akan of Ghana, it was not necessarily a source of power for women since patriarchal ideals prevailed in these communities. Although women may have been recognized as active members of daily experience—even in ritual and other leadership roles in some African communities—they generally were excluded from meetings where clan matters were being discussed. In many Kenyan communities, for example, men remain predominant actors in religious ritual and in secular political meetings. Oduyoye observes a similar situation among the Akan and the Yoruba, when she explains how a wife is ‘‘excluded from affinal decisionmaking, even though she is expected . . . to comply with any and all decisions and to assist in their implementations.’’18 This is because a patriarchal system in African communities is so complex that women participate in it unconsciously by way of reinforcing it. It is a system that is also legitimized by religion making it difficult to distinguish what is cultural from what is divine. Ellen Gruenbaum explains how the patriarchal system works: Patriarchy is a not simply a system of rule by males over females, but a more complex set of relationships that result in domination by older men over younger men and females. But there is other domination and authority here as well: females over children, older women over younger women, older children over younger children, boys as they grow up increasingly

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asserting themselves over girls, even older sisters who used to have authority and so on.19

Because patriarchy is justified by religion, attitudes towards women influence not only the way women are treated by their family members and in society but also the way women perceive themselves. Within the family, a girl child learns from her parents and grandparents. It is here that she is told indigenous stories. Some stories describe the origin of patriarchy and the place of women in society. Among the Kikuyu, for instance, a creation story is told about a tyrannical matriarchy in the past, which was passed down through the female descendants. During this time, women ruled with an iron hand. Men were forced to do everything including cultivating, planting, harvesting, food preparation, babysitting, hunting, and protection of the community. Women, who did nothing, ordered men around and imposed all kinds of punishments on them. Men conspired to end this tyranny by impregnating the women, thus making them weak in order to take control and create a new world order.20 This story, which is still popular among the Kikuyu people, does not only communicate the ideology of male dominance and hence the origin of patriarchy among the Kikuyu, it also illustrates a patriarchal ideal that motherhood is incompatible with power. Although rites of incorporation were significant in indigenous communities for integrating girls and boys into clan fellowship, social responsibility and the teaching imparted to the individual during this period instilled patriarchal values and a social hierarchy that is responsible even today for social inequality, and the lower status of women is sanctioned by religion. Initiation rites are a significant part of the socialization process of female subordination, because the child is taught how to relate to her spouse and other members of the community within the ideology of male dominance. Certain taboos that are introduced act as instruments of male dominance and female subjugation. For instance, taboos surrounding purity, virginity, and sexuality taught to girls have been criticized for propagating sexism. For example, female circumcision that is practiced in some of the communities to maintain a woman’s purity has been determined to violate health and sexual rights of girls, and also to be an instrument of sexual control. During initiation rites, girls are taught to desire early marriage, to be submissive to their husbands or face physical discipline (wife battering), to be good homemakers, and to persevere even in difficult situations. In some communities, girls are betrothed as early as 10 years old so that after initiation rites, they move in with their husbands. Among the Maasai, for instance, girls can get married after their circumcision wounds have healed. Most girls drop out of school after circumcision because they are either pregnant or because they believe that education is valueless for girls, as the most

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recognized role for a woman is to get married and have children. Important to note, however, is the fact that initiation groups sometimes serve as a forum of critique of social inequalities. How effective these groups are remains to be seen as traditional values and roles are impacted by global influences. Although taboos about seclusion of menstruating women are a way of acknowledging the maternal principle that women possess as producers of life, the ambivalence associated with menstruation as an impurity raises questions. In most communities, a menstruating woman is believed to be in a state of negativity, possessing destructive spirits—spirits that are not only harmful to men, rulers, and land, but to women themselves as well. The association of the women in this natural state with destruction and their exclusion from participation in rituals speaks to the defiling/purity category that is behind male dominance ideology. In some communities, taboos placed on certain foods—especially those that women are not expected to eat—convey a patriarchal ideology. To reserve certain foods, usually those high in protein, for men without any clear indication of these foods being harmful to women—especially pregnant women—is ideological. Among the Luo of Kenya, for instance, it was taboo for a woman to eat chicken, eggs, milk, sheep, rabbit, and other game animals.21 In addition to expressing the male/female hierarchy, denying women such foods affected their health. The male dominance ideology is also displayed in the meaning and purpose of marriage. Marital relations and household codes are defined such that women’s responsibility is marginal and subordinate. Marriage gifts or securities such as the dowry, which initially symbolized respect and honor, have been commercialized and referred to as ‘‘bride price.’’ These play a key role in defining the place of women in these relationships and understandings, and most often are responsible for apathy and women’s reluctant attitudes towards claiming their rights. Among the Kikuyu, for instance, a woman is called mutumia, meaning one who keeps whatever she has inside, perseveres, does not answer back, expresses no opinion, is seen but not heard. Such a woman is described as a good wife. This message is emphasized to the bride in songs sung during the wedding ceremony. Among the Kalenjin and the Maasai, women are expected to submit to their husbands because they are regarded as children. For instance, whenever a Kalenjin man refers to his children (Lagok), he is automatically referring to his wife along with his children. Wife battering is a common practice in these communities because it was traditionally encouraged as a means of disciplining and keeping women in ‘‘their’’ prescribed place. Kikuyu men are encouraged to discipline their disobedient wives by beating them ‘‘at least once’’ because if they died without beating their wives, ‘‘the curse of your ancestors would catch up with you.’’ Any woman who resists wife battering is often rebuked for her ill manners, even by her own family. Because of the inability to repay

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dowry that is often requested in case of divorce—a rare phenomenon— women tend to endure husband abuse in silence. At death, women in most African communities are coerced into repugnant rituals to rid the spirit of the diseased spouse. Some are also coerced into insecure levirate relationships as their property is abducted on the basis of the ideology of male dominance. Among the Luo of Kenya, for instance, levirate relationships are commonly referred to as ‘‘widow inheritance’’ because the widow, her children, and property are transferred to a male relative of the diseased for supposed protection and to ensure that the diseased lineage is not lost. This practice is based on the assumption that a woman is not only the property of man, but that she also is incapable of handling highranking affairs; such property management is justified by beliefs in ancestors. In most communities, the widow has no choice in the matter regarding her consent, the man to ‘‘inherit’’ her, or how her husband’s property is to be managed. The abuse of this practice has left many widows destitute after losing their property and children to in-laws, not to mention the perniciousness of this practice when communities live under the threat of HIV/AIDS across the continent. It is only a community that embraces an ideology of male dominance that can allow polygamy as an ideal marriage. Although nuclear families were common, polygamy was appraised because it generated a man’s social status by promising to increase his wealth in material possessions and children. Although it has been argued that traditionally polygamy was practiced to protect women from prostitution, to promote marital stability, and for the unity of the extended family, the rights of those involved were violated because of the ideology of male dominance prevalent in African communities. Indigenous stories have contributed towards the status and role of woman in religious activities and general development. Internalization of social stereotypes that are legitimated by beliefs in God and ancestors has led some women to devalue their role in society to the point of not recognizing the value of education. Consequently, the perception of women’s roles as confined to the domestic sphere has resulted in most communities’ devaluation of girls’ education. This attitude manifests as the appalling status of women in African politics, especially in leadership. In Kenya, for instance, the Kenyan African National Union (KANU), the ruling party that took control of Kenya after independence in 1963, resisted women’s leadership for reasons that include social stereotypes about the lower status of women. Jean Davison has observed that, when Kenyan women called for more women in national decision-making positions, the president of Kenya and president of KANU at the time (Daniel Arap Moi) responded that ‘‘God did not make a mistake in making man head of the household, and that even if women were appointed to high decision making positions, they were still expected to be

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subordinate to their husbands at home.’’22 In 1994, only six women were members of the Kenyan parliament, constituting 3.2 percent of the total membership. The first female cabinet member was appointed only in 1995, following continued pressure from women’s groups. The journey to equal representation remains an embattled one. Because of patriarchal ideals, education is preferred for boys, because they are believed to need it more to perform their roles as heads of the family and as actors in the public spheres. Girls are encouraged to perfect their skills as wives, mothers, and housekeepers because this is their important ultimate goal, an attitude expressed by most parents. Unfortunately, some educated women are unwilling to join public positions in politics and other decision-making forums because of apathy and internalized ideas that they will be unsuccessful in these roles. A critical analysis of factors responsible for African women’s social status points to the role of indigenous cultures and religion. This influence, which is implicit and explicit, defines the place of women in Africa. Feminist hermeneutics on the role of indigenous religion and the social status and role of women in society can be richly illuminating in terms of interrogating roots of their status alongside effects of social change.

AFRICAN RELIGION AND SOCIAL RESISTANCE Although African religions have yet to be analyzed to outline sources of liberation for the oppressed, when using African feminist critical hermeneutics, one should be able to reflect upon examples of social injustice and liberation in these religions. Lack of interrogational critique of social institutions of oppression has led to apathy, which masks problems that women in Kenya continue to face today. More important is the absence of gender critique in an analysis of women’s lives. Concerns about women’s welfare can be traced to feminism, a movement that advocates equality for women in contemporary society. Whereas this movement is falsely associated with radicals who hijack it to disrupt and upset family patterns, feminism’s main concern is social justice for women. Feminism is widely associated with social critique of any system that uses female gender as a basis for denying women the societal advantages and rewards permitted to men. It is a movement that recognizes sexism as an invisible paradigm that accounts for men’s ascendancy to professional, executive, and governmental positions and the subjugation of women with intentions to bring about social equality. African feminists have argued for a cultural hermeneutic that interrogates social dynamics of a given community including the examination of the role of religion. African theologians such as Mercy Amba Oduyoye and Musimbi Kanyoro argue that any effective critical evaluation of scriptures should be specific and derived from a particular experience in order for one to

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formulate specific goals and strategies for the liberation struggle. This means that an effective analysis of Kenyan women’s religious experience must seek to employ a tool that is particular to their situation. Critical analysis that draws from Kenyan women’s experiences seeks to reflect upon these women’s situations in light of religious and other social dynamics. In her critique of feminist analyses that do not interrogate specific social contexts, Kenyan feminist theologian Kanyoro explains how hermeneutics of patriarchy that point to men as the oppressors is mistakenly derived. This approach, she argues, is a ‘‘nonstarter’’ in Africa because while African women acknowledge men’s role in oppression, they do not ‘‘throw stones.’’ She reasons that this would pose a major threat to women’s security and solidarity.23 Kanyoro cites an example where African women have shown difficulty in reaching a consensus in matters such as rituals and initiation practices due to cultural loyalty. This lack of consensus may be misperceived as a ‘‘sign of lack of courage or inability to confront issues,’’ but as Kanyoro argues, this is usually a sign of ‘‘counting the cost and of taking stock of the gains and losses.’’ Speaking on how cultural ideologies are embedded in an individual’s lived experience, she explains how difficult it is for African women to agree jointly on cultural practices. She adds: Some African women reason that they want a future in which men are friends. Building that future does not begin by attacking men, but by finding methods of bringing change together with them. This is a tall order, but it is the reality of the lived experience of African women.

By employing an African-feminist critical hermeneutic, one is able to appreciate how institutionalized cultural and religious violence towards women ensures that women are not only victims but also perpetrators of oppression against themselves. In most Kenyan communities, women are circumcisers, instigators of divorce and polygamy, and enforcers of rituals such as ‘‘widow inheritance’’ and circumcision that compromise the welfare of women. As Kanyoro observes with validity, there are areas of ‘‘women’s violence against women.’’ Socialization and the institutionalization of violence blinds them to social injustices associated with social practices, especially when they are sanctioned by religion. It is through the lens of an Africanfeminist critical hermeneutic of suspicion that details of social reality of a given group are brought to the limelight because of the ability of the ‘‘insider’’ to appreciate her own social context. Through critical evaluation, Kenyan women are enabled to reflect upon their social situations to critique practices that promote social injustice while appraising those that are just. As Kanyoro aptly explains, women will come to a realization of the need to ‘‘break the vicious circle of women violating other women in the name of culture.’’24

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One way in which indigenous sources can contribute towards the process of liberation for Kenyan women is through the use of African women’s role models. These models can be sought in matriarchal voices such as those represented by women who have fought social injustice in their communities. To counter stories of subordination, Kenyan women ought to focus on telling their children stories about women who were successful in their histories. Stories of nationalists such as Mary Muthoni Nyanjiri (who led the Mau Mau warriors during the political movement in Kenya) and Me Katilili (who led her people against the colonialists in the Giriama community of Kenya) can be significant sources of empowerment. Their courageous acts of participating in liberation struggles against colonial masters were rewarded by the political independence of their country. Even those courageous women who undertook tasks usually considered insignificant, such as carrying food into the forests to their warriors or hiding firearms and messages in their skirts, can serve as great role models for those required to participate at the grass-roots level in the struggle against social injustice, if their roles are affirmed as significant. Such inspiration can motivate agency that is crucial in action towards social justice. As indicated earlier, African religions can contribute to social transformation through indigenous methods of social resistance. Independent movements have gone a long way to utilize this method in syncretistic practices found in Kenya. The incorporation of spirit possession into Christianity and the interpretation of this phenomenon as a case of possession by the Holy Spirit is an excellent way for women to reclaim indigenous ways of asserting themselves. In many African independent churches in Kenya, such as the Roho and the Akurinu churches, women are constantly being possessed by the Holy Spirit and exercising charismatic roles. An example of this phenomenon is found in leaders such as Mary Akatsa, a leader of the Jerusalem Church of Christ in Nairobi, Veronica Kanunkuchia, a prophetess and healer in the Mugwe church (Organization for Christian Acts of Mercy), and Gaudencia Aoko, founder of the Legion of Mary church. These women started their churches through the message of spirit possession. Among some of the activities they perform include ‘‘revelations and healings, exorcisms, preaching, counseling, and witch-finding.’’ People flock to them with issues of conflict in society which are usually addressed through consultation of the ‘‘mysterious world,’’ which people believe they are able to access. A good example of this is that of Mary Akatsa. According to Kinoti, Akatsa’s gift of spirit possession is coated in Pentecostalism. It was acquired in her upbringing, and is interpreted as the work of the Holy Spirit. Among her activities are revelations, healings, exorcisms, preaching, counseling, and witch-finding. Akatsa is believed to possess mystical power. She claims to be Christ’s tool or vessel. She uses the Bible more as a ‘‘fetish with which

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to hit her patients’’ in her therapeutic sessions.25 What is interesting about Akatsa is that people travel long distances to seek her counseling services. There are many other women in Kenya with similar charisma and influence that could be tapped and used as tools for social transformation. Although it is important to recognize the fact that significant steps have been undertaken to improve the situation of women in Africa, a lot remains to be accomplished. A lot will be accomplished only if factors that contribute to the matrix of oppression of these women are identified and critiqued and policies are established towards transforming stereotypes rooted in these factors. One of the challenges that women in Africa face is the need to reclaim their agency and to persistently voice social injustice where and when it occurs. Every incident of sexism or discrimination must be voiced and condemned. Attempts should be made towards the transformation of women’s attitudes and pursuits of cultural or religious practices that violate their rights and dignity. While some cultural values are undoubtedly valuable resources of a given community in the sense of providing members of this community with a sense of identity and cohesion, advocating a return to indigenous features without a critical appraisal of unjust practices is to miss the point altogether. Admittedly, some indigenous values were useful in traditional communities, and attempts to revive them would be sufficient. Attempts should be made to resuscitate some of the noble aspects of our enviable culture, such as those that promoted cohesion within the society as long as they were not harmful to any group of individuals in a given community. It , however, unrealistic to ignore inevitable changes that have taken place in our contemporary communities by claiming that indigenous practices continue to apply even where they are resisted. Although the task of self-critique is not an easy one, it is a significant one in any process of promoting social justice. It is of importance that African women face their own responsibility and strive to be self-critical in the analysis of social cultural values they embrace. This responsibility includes an acknowledgment of factors that contribute to their current situation and historical failures to address them. In other words, African women need to transcend playing victim and face their situation more realistically and critically. African women have a responsibility to fight against their own timidity and alienation in whatever area—religious, political, social, or economic. They must be willing to fight at the side of their own brothers, whose struggle could then become efficacious as they recognize their own true worth. A South African feminist Musa Dube highlights two significant dimensions that are critical in understanding and analyzing social contexts within which African women live. According to her, ‘‘as women attempt to

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confront oppressive aspects in their own indigenous systems, they should be cautious not to join the colonizing discourse of rejecting or demonizing every aspect of indigenous cultures as well.’’26 This is because a total rejection of one’s culture is imperialistic since no culture is absolutely negative, bad, or wholly pure. Room should always be made for reinterpretation of the old, promotion of the good, and promotion of the creative. Restoration of some aspects of indigenous cultures and reinterpretation of others for the empowerment of women and all Africans should be the main objective of social critique. The responsibility for transformative attitudes of both men and women towards the social status of women and roles they play in religion and society rests in the reality of all social institutions, but religious groups, especially, have a reformative responsibility because of the authority that they wield. As Oduyoye observes with regard to Christianity, justice and equality demanded in scriptures must be translated into respect for the structuring of the community in order to promote peaceful and healthy social relationships on this Earth. It is the responsibility of social institutions not only to critique systems that condone injustice to women, but also to stand in solidarity with women as they struggle against harmful practices that are sanctioned by religion. It is the responsibility of these institutions to enable women to reclaim positive values in the traditional culture even as they question oppressive ones.

CONCLUSION In this chapter I have explored the status and role of women in traditional religions of Africa, giving most of my illustrations from the Kenyan experience. Central to my discussion is the need for religion to be analyzed as a variable in the social construction of women’s experience. Although social experience is influenced by the socialization process, the role of religion as a legitimizing agent makes this process sacrosanct. While indigenous practices and roles make perfect sense in an indigenous social context, African lifestyle has been transformed by Western and foreign religious ideas—a fact that compels the need for a renewed reflection on norms that they embrace. Central in this transformational process is the general welfare of African women. Important to discussion is the need for an analytical approach to be embraced by African women and those who care about their welfare in order to capture social variables that define these women’s experiences. The need for African women to examine critically all ideologies that they adopt—both indigenous and foreign—is crucial if social justice is to be promoted. This includes the need to interrogate social structures that influence indigenous and foreign cultures and religions in order to embrace only those values that affirm the well-being of women and the dignity of all.

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NOTES 1. John S. Mbiti, African Philosophy and Religion (London: Heinemann, 1999), 1; See also Mercy A. Oduyoye, Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy (New York: Orbis Books, 1999), 109–30. 2. Amede L. Obiora, ‘‘Bridges and Barricades: Rethinking Polemics against Female Circumcision,’’ Case Western Reserve Law Review 47, No. 2 (1997): 302. 3. Peter Berger, The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion (New York: Anchor Books, 1990), 32–33. 4. Dorothy Smith, Writing the Social Critique: Theory and Investigations (London: University of Toronto Press, 1999), 48–78. 5. Jan Knappert, East Africa: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda (New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1987), 101–33. 6. John S. Mbiti, Concepts of God in Africa (London: SPCK, 1970). 7. Ibid., 80. 8. Ibid., 211–12. 9. Mbiti, African Philosophy and Religion, 167–69. 10. Knappert, East Africa, 121–23. 11. Oduyoye, Daughters of Anowa, 21–26. 12. Benjamin Ray, African Religions: Symbols, Ritual, and Community. 2nd Edition (New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2000), 38. 13. Kennth Kojo Anti, ‘‘Women in African Religion,’’ unpublished paper. 14. Henrietta L. Moore, Space, Text and Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya. (London: Cambridge University Press, 1986), 177. 15. Rosemary Edet and Bette Ekeya, ‘‘Church, Women of Africa: A Traditional Community’’ in With Passion and Compassion: Third World Women Doing Theology, edited by M. Fabella and M. A. Oduyoye (New York: Orbis Books, 1998), 6–7. 16. Denise L. Carmody, Women and World Religions (Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1979), 31. 17. David Sweetman, Women Leaders in African History (London: Heinemann, 1984). See also Oduyoye, Daughters of Anowa, 92ff. 18. Oduyoye, Daughters of Anowa, 90, 130. 19. Ellen Gruenbaum, The Female Circumcision Controversy: An Anthropological Perspective (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001), 41. 20. Wanjiku M. Kabira, ‘‘Images of Women in Oral Literature: An Overview of Images of Women in Kikuyu Oral Narratives,’’ in Understanding Oral Literature. ed. A. Bukenya., M. K.Wanjiku, and O. Okombo (Nairobi: University Press, 1994), 77. 21. Tabitha Kanogo, ‘‘Kikuyu Women and the Politics of Protest: Mau Mau,’’ in Images of Women in Peace and War, Cross-cultural and Historical

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Perspectives, ed. S. MacDonald, P. Holden, and S. Ardener (London: Macmillan Education, 1987), 97. 22. Jean Davidson, Voices from Mutira: Change in the Lives of Rural Gikuyu Women, 1910–1995 (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996), 7. 23. Musimbia R. A. Kanyoro, ‘‘Cultural Hermeneutics: An African Contribution,’’ in Other Ways of Reading African Women and the Bible, ed. Musa W. Dube (Geneva: WCC Publications, 2001), 106. 24. Ibid., 107. 25. Hannah Kinoti, ‘‘Women and Spirit Possession,’’ in Groaning in Faith: African Women in the Household of God, ed. M. R. A. Kanyoro and J. N. Nyambura (Nairobi: Acton Publishers, 1996), 239. 26. Musa Dube, ‘‘Postcoloniality, Feminist Spaces and Religion,’’ in Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse, ed. Laura E. Donaldson and Kwok Pui-lan (New York: Routledge, 2002), 115.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Anti, Kenneth Kojo. ‘‘Women in African Religion.’’ Unpublished paper, 1996. Berger, Peter. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. New York: Anchor Books, 1990. Carmody, Denise L. Women and World Religions. Nashville, TN: Abingdon Press, 1979. Davidson, Jean.Voices from Mutira: Change in the Lives of Rural Gikuyu Women, 1910–1995. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996. Dube, Musa. ‘‘Postcoloniality, Feminist Spaces and Religion.’’ In Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse, edited by Laura E. Donaldson and Kwok Pui-lan, 100–122. New York: Routledge, 2002. Edet, Rosemary, and Bette Ekeya. ‘‘Church, Women of Africa: A Traditional Community.’’ In With Passion and Compassion: Third World Women Doing Theology, edited by M. Fabella and M. A. Oduyoye, 3–13. New York: Orbis Books, 1998. Gruenbaum, Ellen. The Female Circumcision Controversy: An Anthropological Perspective. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Kabira, Wanjiku M. ‘‘Images of Women in Oral Literature: An Overview of Images of Women in Kikuyu Oral Narratives.’’ In Understanding Oral Literature, edited by A. Bukenya, M. K. Wanjiku, and O. Okombo, 77–84. Nairobi: University Press, 1994. Kanogo, Tabitha. ‘‘Kikuyu Women and the Politics of Protest: Mau Mau.’’ In Images of Women in Peace and War, Cross-cultural and Historical Perspectives, edited by S. MacDonald, P. Holden, and S. Ardener, 78–99. London: Macmillan Education, 1987.

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Kanyoro, Musimbi R. A. ‘‘Cultural Hermeneutics: An African Contribution.’’ In Other Ways of Reading African Women and the Bible, edited by Musa W. Dube. Geneva: WCC Publications, 2001. Kinoti, Hannah. ‘‘Women and Spirit Possession.’’ In Groaning in Faith: African Women in the Household of God, edited by M. R. A. Kanyoro and J. N. Nyambura. Nairobi: Acton Publishers, 1996. Knappert, Jan. East Africa: Kenya, Tanzania and Uganda. New Delhi: Vikas Publishing House, 1987. Mbiti, John S. African Philosophy and Religion. London: Heinemann 1999. . Concepts of God in Africa. London: SPCK. 1970. Moore, Henrietta L. Space, Text and Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya. London: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Obiora, Amede L. ‘‘Bridges and Barricades: Rethinking Polemics against Female Circumcision.’’ Case Western Reserve Law Review 47, No. 2 (1997): 275–378. Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy. New York: Orbis Books, 1999. Ray, Benjamin. African Religions: Symbols, Ritual, and Community. 2nd Edition. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 2000. Smith, Dorothy. Writing the Social Critique: Theory and Investigations. London: University of Toronto Press, 1999. Sweetman , David. Women Leaders in African History. London: Heinemann, 1984.

Suggested Reading Abimbola, Wande. Ifa: An Exposition of the Ifa Literary Corpus. Boston: Athelia Henrietta Press, 1998. Akintunde, D. O., ed. African Culture and the Quest for Women’s Rights. Lagos, Nigeria: SEFER Books, 2001. Awe, B. Nigerian Women in Historical Perspective. Ibadan: Sankore/Bookcraft, 1992. Babatunde, E. Women’s Rites Versus Women’s Rights: A Study of Circumcision Among the Ketu Yoruba of South-Western Nigeria. Trenton, NJ: Africa World Press, Inc., 1998. Badejo, D. Osun Seegesi-The Elegant Deity of Wealth, Power and Femininity. Trenton: Africa World Press, 1996. Barber, K. I Could Speak Till Tomorrow: Oriki, Women, and the Past in a Yoruba Town. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1991. Bednarowski, Mary Farrell. New Religions and the Theological Imagination in America. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1989. Bigwood, Carol. Earth Muse: Feminism, Nature and Art. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993. Brandon, George. Dead Sell Memories: Santeria from Africa to the New Worlds Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1993. Brock, Rita Nakashima. ‘‘Interstitial Integrity: Reflections toward an Asian American Woman’s Theology.’’ In Introduction to Christian Theology: Contemporary North American Perspectives, edited by Roger A. Badham. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998. Brown, Karen McCarthy. Mama Lola. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990/2001. Bryce-Laporte, Roy S. ‘‘Crisis, Contraculture and Religion among West Indians in the Panama Canal Zone.’’ In Afro-American Anthropology: Comparative Perspectives, edited by Norman E. Whitten, Jr., and John F. Szwed. New York: Free Press, 1970.

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Davidson, Jean. Voices from Mutira: Change in the Lives of Rural Gikuyu Women, 1910–1995. London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1996. ´ Dıaz, Marı´a Elena. The Virgin, the King, and the Royal Slaves of El Cobre: Negotiating Freedom in Colonial Cuba, 1670–1780. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. Douglas, Kelly Brown. Sexuality and the Black Church. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1999. Dube, Musa. ‘‘Postcoloniality, Feminist Spaces and Religion.’’ In Postcolonialism, Feminism and Religious Discourse, edited by Laura E. Donaldson and Kwok Puilan. New York: Routledge, 2002, 100–122. Eason, Louis Djisovi Ikukomi. IFA: The Yoruba God of Divination in Nigeria and the United States. Trenton: Africa World Press, Inc., 2008. Edet, Rosemary and Bette Ekeya. ‘‘Church, Women of Africa: A Traditional Community.’’ In With Passion and Compassion: Third World Women Doing Theology, edited by M. Fabella and M. A. Oduyoye. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1998, 3–13. Fiorenza, Elisabeth Schu¨ssler. Wisdom Ways: Introducing Feminist Biblical Interpretation. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2001. Gallagher, Eugene. ‘‘Neo-Paganism.’’ In The New Religious Movements Experience in America. Westport, Conn: Greenwood Press, 2004. Gruenbaum, Ellen. The Female Circumcision Controversy: An Anthropological Perspective. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001. Heywood, Linda M. and John K. Thornton. Central Africans, Atlantic Creoles, and the Foundation of the Americas, 1585–1660. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007. Hucks, Tracey. Approaching the Gods: An Historical Narrative of African Americans and Yoruba Religion in the United States, 1959 to the Present, A Ph.D. Dissertation. Cambridge: Harvard University, 1998. Hunt, Carl M. Oyotunji Village: The Yoruba Movement in America. Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1979. Kabira, Wanjiku M. ‘‘Images of Women in Oral Literature: An Overview of Images of Women in Kikuyu Oral Narratives.’’ In Understanding Oral Literature, edited by Bukenya A. Wanjiku M. K. and Okombo O. Nairobi: University Press, 1994, 77–84. Kanogo, Tabitha. ‘‘Kikuyu Women and the Politics of Protest: Mau Mau.’’ In Images of Women in Peace and War: Cross-cultural and Historical Perspectives, edited by S. MacDonald, P. Holden, and S. Ardener. London: Macmillan Education, 1987, 78–99. Kanyoro, Musimbi R. A. ‘‘Cultural Hermeneutics: An African Contribution.’’ In Other Ways of Reading African Women and the Bible, edited by Musa W. Musa, Geneva: WCC Publications, 2001.

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Kaplan, Flora Edouwaye S., ed. Queens, Queen Mothers, Priestesses, and Power: Case Studies in African Gender. New York: The New York Academy of Sciences, 1997. Kinoti, Hannah. ‘‘Women and Spirit Possession.’’ In Groaning in Faith: African Women in the Household of God, edited by M. R. A. Kanyoro and Nyambura J. N. Nairobi: Acton Publishers, 1996. Moore, Henrietta L. Space, Text and Gender: An Anthropological Study of the Marakwet of Kenya. London: Cambridge University Press, 1986. Oduyoye, Mercy Amba. Daughters of Anowa: African Women and Patriarchy. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1995. Olajubu, Oyeronke and Jacob Olupona. Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere. New York: Suny Press, 2003. Oluwole, S. Womanhood in Yoruba Traditional Thought. Bayreuth: Iwalewa-Haus, 1993. Robb, Carol S. The Rights of Armers, the Common Good, and Feminist Questions.’’ In Covenant for a New Creation: Ethics, Religion, and Public Policy, edited by Carol S. Robb and Carl J. Casebol, 272–290. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1991. Sackey, Brigid M. New Directions in Gender and Religion: The Changing Status of Women in African Independent Churches.. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2006. Sered, Susan Starr. Priestess, Mother, Sacred Sister: Religions Dominated by Women. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994. Stubbs, Jean. ‘‘Social and Political Motherhood of Cuba: Mariana Grajales Cuello.’’ In Engendering History: Caribbean Women in Historical Perspective, edited by Verene Shepherd, Bridget Breneton, and Barbara Bailey. Kingston, Jamaica: Ian Randle Publisher, 1995, 296–317. Teish, Luisah. Jambalaya. San Francisco: Harper, 1985. Thornton, John. The Kongolese Saint Anthony: Dona Beatriz Kimpa Vita and the Antonia Movement, 1684–1706. Cambridge: Press Syndicate of the University of Cambridge, 1998. Thurman, Sue. B. ‘‘Mary Ellen Pleasant.’’ In Pioneers of Negro Origin in California. Schenectady, NY: Acme Press, 1949. Vogel, Susan. ‘‘Introduction: Digesting the West.’’ In Africa Explores: 20th Century African Art, edited by Susan Vogel. New York: Center for African Art, 1991. Ward, Martha. Voodoo Queen: The Spirited Lives of Marie Laveau. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2004. West, Cynthia S’Thembile. ‘‘Revisiting Female Activism in the 1960s: The Newark Branch of the Nation of Islam.’’ The Black Scholar. 26.3–4 (2001): 41–48.

About the Editors and Contributors

Lillian Ashcraft-Eason is Professor of History at BGSU (Ohio), Director of the Benin Seminar and Initiator and Past Director of the Africana Studies Program. A teacher in several universities since the 1970s, as Chair of the Department of Religion and Philosophy at Clark Atlanta University, she collaborated in several nationally prominent, scholarly projects and is a past President of the Society for the Study of Black Religion. She received her Ph.D. from the College of William and Mary, where she began her research interests in history and religion. She is author of a book, numerous journal articles, and book chapters in the field of African American religious history, as well as the editor of a book in Ethnic Studies. She is completing a booklength study of black women and religion in the British North American colonies and is author of several published essays under this theme. Darnise C. Martin is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Loyola Marymount University where she teaches courses in African American Studies and Theological Studies. She is the author of Beyond Christianity: African Americans in a New Thought Church (2004). She continues research on the influence of New Thought religions upon contemporary Prosperity Ministries. Professor Martin also speaks regularly to church and school communities, and she has been interviewed by television and radio host Tavis Smiley for his NPR radio program.

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Oyeronke Olademo is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Ilorin, Nigeria, where she has taught and researched on comparative religions and women in religion for the past 19 years. She has published internationally and within Africa. She was a Visiting Scholar at the Women Studies Program at Harvard University (2000–2001). Her research during that year resulted in her first book, Women in the Yoruba Religious Sphere. Her second book is in press. Susheel Bibbs, African Diaspora Scholar and Presenter, currently lectures as faculty of the Department of Entrepreneurship and Leadership at the University of California, Berkeley, and holds a doctorate in Communications, specializing in the Mass Communication of African American and Diaspora history. The recipient of a national Emmy for her work as a TV series Executive Producer, Bibbs has since 1994 researched and written books, touring stage works, and award-winning independent documentaries on African American pioneer-activist Mary Ellen Pleasant. Recent accomplishments include partnership in the Canadian-funded collaborative Promised Land Project (which documents Underground Railroad migrations between the United States and Western Ontario), lectures on Vodou for Zorafest (the yearly celebration on Zora Neale Hurston), and touring as lecturer-presenter on black classical song and the Negro spiritual. A sampling of Bibbs’s recent awards and commendations includes ‘‘Best Director of a Documentary: Meet Mary Ellen Pleasant, 2008’’ from the New York International Independent Film Festival, the first ‘‘Keeper of the Spiritual Award’’ from Friend’s of Negro Spirituals, and the title, ‘‘World’s Foremost Expert on Mary Pleasant’’ in the Highest Commendation from the supervisors of the city and county of San Francisco. Jualynne E. Dodson is Professor in the Department of Sociology and in the Graduate Program in African American & African Studies at Michigan State University. She is an African Diaspora scholar and researcher whose last investigative agenda was studying Cuba’s distinct religions. She is founder and director of the African Atlantic Research Team, a volunteer mentoring collective of undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, and community persons interested in supporting students of color who wish to complete the doctorate degree in an academic discipline with emphasis on issues related to the African Diaspora. Yeyefini Efunbolade, an ordained Ifa (Yoruba) Priest/Healer who teaches traditional African rituals and ceremonies in the United States and abroad, is the Founder and Director of Self-Empowerment Workshops, Inc. (IIASK), a self-empowerment workshop series, and a former public school teacher.

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She is a bilingual (English and Spanish) African spiritual life coach/counselor, diviner, author, teacher, and lecturer. She has utilized her vast training and experiences to create a unique fusion of healing modalities from various indigenous spiritual systems, resulting in the healing of many. She is renowned for her annual Ifa forecasts and her counseling abilities. Stephen C. Finley is an Assistant Professor at Louisiana State University with a joint appointment in Religious Studies and African American Studies. He completed his Ph.D. in May 2009 at Rice University. His dissertation title was, ‘‘Re-imagining Race and Representation: The Black Body in the Nation of Islam.’’ His work revolves around African American religious cultures and embodiment, theory and method in the study of religion, and religion in America. He is the Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia of African American Religious Cultures. He teaches courses on the study of religion, gender, and sexuality in the Black Church; African American religion; the religious thoughts of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, and nineteenth- and twentieth-century black religious thought. Katherine Johanna Hagedorn is Professor of Music and Director of the Ethnomusicology Program at Pomona College in Claremont, California, and has published widely on Afro-Cuban ritual and folkloric music. Her book, Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santerı´a (2001), won the Alan P. Merriam Prize for the best ethnography, and in 2005 she was awarded a Mellon New Directions Fellowship for her current book project, Toward a Theology of Sound. A former member of the Board of Directors of the Society for Ethnomusicology, Dr. Hagedorn has taught at Pomona College since 1993. Kelly E. Hayes is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at Indiana University in Indianapolis. Her research focuses on issues of gender, sexuality, embodiment, morality, and aesthetics in the religions of the African Diaspora and Brazil. Since 1998, she has conducted ethnographic research in Rio de Janeiro. Her book Holy Harlots: Femininity, Sexuality, and Black Magic in Brazil, which explores contemporary beliefs and practices connected to the Afro-Brazilian spirit entity pomba gira, is forthcoming from the University of California Press. Susan E. Hill is an Associate Professor of Religion at the University of Northern Iowa, where she teaches courses on religion and culture, focusing on issues of gender, sexuality, and the body. She has published articles on pedagogy, translation, and spiritual expression in the works of George Eliot and Willa Cather. Her current project examines the moral history of the fat body in the West. She has been a member of the Diana’s Grove community since 1999.

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Dawn L. Hutchinson is an Assistant Professor at Christopher Newport University in the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department. Her Master’s degree is from the University of South Florida and her Ph.D. is from Florida State University. Her areas of scholarship include new religious movements, the New Age, women in religion, American religious history, African American religious history, and witchcraft and the law. Cynthea Jones, in 1993, along with Patricia Storm, founded Diana’s Grove, a spiritual retreat center focused on earth-based spirituality, personal and spiritual growth, and leadership development. Diana’s Grove offers a Mystery School, which uses myth and story as tools for spiritual practice dedicated to healthy group interaction and community-building. In addition to writing Mystery School materials, Cynthea has taught metaphysics, Tarot, and astrology for over 20 years. She also devotes her time to ‘‘Take a Friend Home,’’ the Diana’s Grove dog rescue operation, a no-kill independent rescue in Missouri. Felicia M. Miyakawa is Assistant Professor of Musicology at Middle Tennessee State University where she teaches courses in both popular and art music traditions. She is the author of Five Percenter Rap: God Hop’s Music, Message, and Black Muslim Mission (2005). Halifu Osumare has spent over 30 years performing, choreographing, teaching, administrating, researching, and writing about dance and black popular culture internationally. She is currently an Associate Professor of African American & African Studies at University of California, Davis, and holds a Ph.D. from the University of Hawaii in American Studies. Her book, The Africanist Aesthetic in Global Hip-Hop: Power Moves, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2007. Her 2008 Fulbright Scholars grant in Ghana, West Africa provided the research for her forthcoming book on the effects of hip-hop in Accra, Ghana. Dr. Osumare is also a priestess in the Yoruba/ Lucumi tradition. John K. Simmons received his Ph.D. in Religious Studies from the University of California, Santa Barbara in 1987, and has taught at Western Illinois University since August 1987. For the past four years, he has served as Chair of the Philosophy and Religious Studies Department at Western. His introductory media course in religious studies, ‘‘Beliefs and Believers,’’ has been used at colleges and universities around the nation for the past 19 years. Margarita L. Simon is a third-year graduate student in Religious Studies at Rice University, concentrating in African American Religion and psychology

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of religion. She has written two articles, ‘‘Therapeutic Enterprise: A Psychological Exploration of Healing Elements in a Local African-American Spiritualist Church’’ (2009) and ‘‘Intersecting Points: The ‘Erotic as Religious’ in the Lyrics of Missy Elliot’’ (2009). Tracy Sayuki Tiemeier is Assistant Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles, CA. Holding a Ph.D. in Systematic Theology (with a minor in Comparative Theology) from Boston College, she teaches and researches in the areas of comparative theologies, Asian and Asian American theologies, feminist theologies, and Hinduisms. Mary Nyangweso Wangila is an Assistant Professor at East Carolina University. She received her Ph.D. in Sociology of Religion from Drew University in 2004. Her areas of research interest include indigenous religions, Islam, and women. Her work is informed by ethical, human rights, social, and ethnographic methods of analysis. Her recent book Female Circumcision: The Interplay of Religion Gender and Culture in Kenya (2007) examines the role of religion in sanctioning cultural ideals and practices that affect women’s sexuality and general life. She has also published numerous articles on religion, including a book chapter on religion, women’s rights, and HIV/ AIDS in Africa. Kimberly Whitney is a Religious Studies Scholar, writing and teaching in the area of place in the religious and cultural imagination. Her work engages the sciences and ecology, as well as geography. She is the former Minister for Higher and Theological Education for the United Church of Christ and currently serves the interdisciplinary life of the collegium of senior leaders of this body. Her short video for the church, A Place for Us, was recently produced with shots on location in New Orleans and Berkeley, celebrating the transformative role of education in society.

Index Abram, David, 242 Africa: ancestors, 192–95, 300–305; deities, 193–94; diviners, 306; gender construction, 307–309, 311–15; indigenous religion, 301–302, 316; Supreme God, 304–305, 307 Africana Religions, vii-x African Atlantic Research Team (AART), 167–69 African ethnic groups and influences, 171–72 African women leaders in history and myth, 197–98, 307–10 Afro-Brazilian religions (def.), 102 Agency, 15, 17–19 Agricultural metaphors, 7–8, 12, 18 Akpwo´n, 147, 156, 160 Allah (the Father, Clarence 13X), 29–31, 33, 36, 37, 39–40, 42, 43, 44, 45–46 Anthropomorphism, 149 Anxiety, 13–17, 21 ARC triangle, 264–65 Asian Pacific American (APA), 208–12, 215, 219 Auditor (auditing), 257–58 Authenticity, 150, 158 Auto-apotheosis, 152 Baker, Diane, 234 Balance in male-female principle, 194; binary categorization, 191–92 Bata´ drums, 146

Beauty and religious imagination, 291–93 Bembe, 61 Benjinite, 57–59 Body, 4–6, 8–9, 13–14, 18, 20–21 Bourdieu, Pierre, 4, 7 Bridge to Total Freedom, 258 Brock, Rita Nakashima, 209–215, 220, 222 Brown, Kelly Douglas, 5–7 Cabildos, 125 Candomble´, 104–11 passim Capone, Stefania, 120 Carlota, 175, 187 n.17 Catholic Church, 102, 106; saints, 103, 105 Cazuela, 173 Chung Hyun Kyung, 215, 220–21 Circumcision, 201–202, 309, 311, 313– 15; Westernization, 202 Clark, Veve, 92 n.25, 124, 135, 136, 138, 140 n.2 Clear, 257–58, 260 Concubinage, 62–63, 194, 201 Consciousness, 146,150, 151, 162, 163 Contamination, 10–11, 14, 17 Cosmological myths, 191–92, 194 Cosmology, 5, 7–8, 11, 16, 20 Creole Religions, ix Cuban historical context (Taino Indian, Spanish, Haitian, African), 169–72

333

334 Cuban Vodu´, 177–80; African influences, 177–79 Cult, 272–73 Curtis IV, Edward, 20 Deep listeners, 148, 162 De Moraes, Zelio, 113 Diana’s Grove 231–53: cornerstones of community, 248–49; intentional community, 231; leadership, 231, 238, 239, 242, 243; Mystery School, 235, 236, 242, 243, 245; Patrica Storm,231, 233; priestess, 233, 238; ritual, 232–33, 240, 244, 248, 249 Dianetics, 256, 258 Dietary Codes, 9, 12–13, 16, 20 Dirt, 4, 21 Displacements and migrations, 289–91 Divine Wisdom, 47 Douglas, Mary, 4, 7, 21–22 Dube, Musa, South African feminist, 317–18 Dunham, Katherine, 80, 86, 92 n.25, 121, 130, 135, 140 n.2 Dynamics, 261 Earth-based spirituality, 231, 233, 240 Eilberg-Schwartz, Howard, 15 Emergent, integrative spiritual movement, 232 (def.), 239, 244, 251 Engrams, 256–59 Espiritismo de Cordon, 183–84; relation to War of Independence, 181; ritual, 183–84 Espiritismo in Cuba, 180–81; African influences, 180, 182; four pathways, 181–84; multinational influences, 180; nationalistic emphasis, 181, 182 espiritista, 173 Farrakhan, Louis, 31 Female-dominated religions (def.), 101 Female reproduction, 8 Femininity, 8, 10, 13–16 Filth, 11, 13, 18, 22 Folkloricization, 155 Food, 3–4, 8–14 Fortune, Dion, 244 Fruit of Islam, 30–31, 32–33

I NDEX Fuller, Robert, 249 Gallagher, Eugene, 235 Gender, 146, 147, 148, 149, 160, 164 General Civilization Class (GCC), 20 Ghana, 58, 61 Grajales, Mariana, 179, 181, 188 n.26 Grassroots social movements, 281 Habito, Ruben, 216–219, 224 Hanh, Thich Nhat, 288 Heaven and Earth, 191–192, 194 Heritage of power, 78, 80, 88 Heterosexuality, 16, 20 Historical context: integrated religious multiplicities, 168; Taino Indian, Spanish, Haitian, African, 169–72 Homoerotic, 15 Homosexuality, 8, 14 hooks, bell, 6–7, 14–15, 278 Hubbard, L. Ron, 256 Ifa, 55, 59, 61, 68, 72, 197 Initiation, 62–63, 67 Instrumentality, 151, 157, 162 Integrated religious multiplicities, 168 Interiority, 146, 149, 151, 152, 153, 158, 159 Interstices, 212, 219, 223, 224, 225, 226; interstitial integrity, 208, 209–12, 219; interstitiality, 210; interstitial religion, 222 Ita´, 63, 81, 152, 173, James, Joel, 182 Kardec, Allan, 111, 183 Kenyan women leaders, 316 Kikuyu, 306, 309–10, 403 Kim, Grace Ji-Sun, 209, 224 Kim, Jung Ha, 222 Kingston, Maxine Hong, 212 ‘‘The Last Poets,’’ 59 Las Tunas, Cuba, 177 LaVeaux, Marie: life and achievements, 85; reported power/impact, 86; social model, 84 Law-Yone, Wendy, 211–12

Index Leaders: Muerte´ra Bembe´ de Sao, 173; Palo Monte/Mayombe, 175 Lieux de memoire, 124, 129, 136 Little, Ella, 20–21 lwa/loa: Damballah-Aida Wedo, 79, 80; Katherine Dunham, 80, 86; meaning, 79, 177–78; met tet, 79, 80; Zora Neale Hurston, 80 Macumba, 114 Magic, 244–45 (def.), 248, 249 Malcolm X, 20, 30 Mambo: Mama Lola, 78, 87; mandated roles, 79–81; meaning, 78; modes of guidance/Ifa sayings, 80, 81. See also LaVeaux, Marie; Pleasant, Mary Ellen Mar, M. Elaine, 211 Marriage, 194; levirate, 312–13; polygamy, 313; role of women, 201, 309–10 Masculinity, 7, 12, 14–16, 17, 20 Menstruation, 201–202, 312 MEST, 258 Miles, Margaret, 278 Milieux de memoire, 124, 129, 136 Mind-body dualism, 151, 159 Moore, Thomas, 241 Muerte´ra Bembe´ de Sao, 172–74; African influences, 173 Muhammad, Clara Evans, 19 Muhammad, Elijah, 3, 7–11, 12–14, 17– 18, 20–21, 29, 33 Muhammad, Fard, 33 Muslim Girl’s Training (MGT), 20 Mythology, 234, 244–46, 249; Greek, 234, 235, 246; nature, 232, 233, 234, 239– 44, 246; pagan, 234 Nation of Islam, 29, 30, 32–34, 42–43, 45, 48 New Religions, viii, 7, 8, 301, 302, 352 New Religious Movement (NRM), viii, 14, 277, 278, 299, 353, 360 Nganga, 175–76 Nigeria, 58, 61–62, 68, 71 North Carolina A & T State University, 59 Oba, 55–56, 59, 61–63, 65–72 Obatala, 60, 62–64, 66–67, 72

335 Odu Ifa, 61, 79, 99 Ogboni, 66 Olu´ bata´, 147, 160 Operating thetan (OT), 258 Oral traditions, 191, 306 Oricha, 145–59 Oriente regional geography, 167, 169–70; diverse religious influences, 169–72; four distinct religions studied, 172; Indian and African interactive relations, 171–72; natural resources, 169–70 Orisha, 61, 63–65, 67–68, 72–73 Oru seco, 147 Palenques, 170–71, 173 Palo Monte/Mayombe, 174–77; African influences, 174; rite of initiation, 175 Pan African, 59 Panama Canal, 57 Patriarchy, 310–12 Pig, 9, 22 Place: healing place, 285–86; place and the sacred, 279; place-making practices, 278 Pleasant, Mary Ellen: life story, 82, 83; reportage about, 84; significance/civil rights work, 83; work with Marie LaVeaux, 84 Poison, 3–4, 10–12, 14, 16, 21–22 Pollution, 4 Polygamy, 62–64, 66–70 Pork, 9–12, 20 Postmodern community, 280 Powell, Adam Clayton, 58 Priestess, 56, 59–67, 69–70 Procreation and childbirth, 195–96, 197, 201–202 Purdah, 42 Purification Rundown, 271 Quality of life, 295–96 Regionalism: cultures and ecologies, 287–89 Regla de Ocha: 145–59 Religious practices of place, 278 Religious Technology Center (RTC), 260 Reproduction, 12, 17

336 Rio de Janeiro, 113 Ritual, 3, 5, 7, 10, 12, 15–16, 20 Ritualization, 17 Santeria, 56, 124–26, 128–29, 131–35, 138–39, 145, 154, 187 n.24 Santiago de Cuba, 173 Schomburg Library, 58, 63 Scientology: education, 265–67; marriage, 262–65, 269 Sea Org, 267 Secular community, 303 Sered, Susan Starr, 101, 121 Serviteurs, 179–81 Sexuality, 3, 5–6, 13 Spiritism, 111 Spirit possession: 145–59; avenue for women’s self-assortment, 303, 308, 316 Spirits: Palo Monte/Mayombe, 174; Vodu´, 179–80 Starhawk, 231, 234 Subjectivity, 3–4, 17, 19, 145, 146, 150, 151, 159, 161, 163 Supreme Alphabet, 31–32, 36 Supreme Mathematics (science of), 31– 32, 34, 40, 43, 47 Supreme Ways (in intersection), 216–19, 224, 225, 226 Sustainability, 282 Syncretism, 149, 161; as adaptation, 224;

I NDEX survival-liberation centered, 215, 216, 220–21; vs. synergism, 221–23 Tambor, xii, 145–59 Tate, Sonsyrea, 18 Taxonomy, 21 Thetans, 256, 264, 265 Tuan, Yi-Fu, 281 Umbanda, 101–102, 111–117 passim Vagina envy, 16 Vedanta, 77, 78 Virginity, 201, 311 Vodou religion: description, 75–77, 80, 81, 103, 167; expert practitioners, 87, 88; sacred dance, 79, 89–90, 124–28, 131– 32, 136–139 Walker, Alice, 278 Welty, Eudora, 277 West, Cynthia S’thembile, 19 White supremacy, 8–9, 13–15, 18 Witchcraft, 199, 200; Iya Mi, 193, 197, 199, 200, 202 Witt, Doris, 3, 7, 13, 17–18 Women writers, about place, 283 Yancy, George, 5, 7 Yoruba, 55, 59–73; world view and gender construction, 191–92, 195