Apla'T wrote:
Lucumi is a mixture of cuban catholic ideas and phrasology with yoruban esoteric concepts. Forced integration, over the course of time, required this mixture of language, with the discrepencies in context being overlooked according to the newfound consumer catholic slant.
. Lucumi Ifa accord of Oba Orietes is an attempt to say that the only type of mystery left in the world belongs to the cuban lucumi cult who is assisting in creating the meme structure with which to evolve catholocism, and erase african history outside of the context of a few cuban elders. The idea of adding language into the mixture has precedent, as well as the idea of sharing what some consider secrets.
The above is simply a distant relative to the facts.
Allow me to explain.
The 1960s and early to mid 70s were a period of intense social upheaval. Old ideas were being questioned deeply as young people decided to examine and in many cases reject what was handed down to them as expected conduct. Remember this was a time when women decided to question their traditional roles and exclusions (and rightly so). The people decided to question America’s need to fly half way around the planet to attack people who had little chance of invading the USA. The epicentre of such a movement was the urban USA. The Personal became the political.
Of course the black and brown people of the USA had their own questions and examinations as seen in the human rights movement and the resurgence of issues of Negritude that was last seen in the Harlem Renaissance. Everyone should have heard of the Black Panther but has everyone heard of the Latin or Young Lords Which were very active in New York? At that time New York was the centre of Santeria in America. And some of the Eldest and most respected Olorisha and Babalawos still live there despite their children moving to Miami. How these people can take the NY winter is beyond me (lol).
It was therefore inevitable that those who gravitated to or were already involved in Santeria were likely to get involved in the questioning the Christian aspects of the religion. Santeria was never a syncretic religion. For anyone to claim that is to show woeful ignorance of syncretism.
After a period of examination it was decided to purge the religion of all Xtian elements. To further seal this new clarified religion religion it was decided to adopt the word “Lukumi” and drop the word “Santeria”.
The author and scholar George Brandon ( in his book The Dead sell memories) has carefully pointed out that it was the folk Catholicism of pain and Cuba that ironically made the fertile ground that allowed the religion to grown in both Cuba and Brazil. Whereas in the English speaking South and Central American countries even where there were significant amounts of Yoruba slaves the Yoruba religion did not take root as the English-speaking slave owning countries were protestant. Of course a similar thing happened with Haitian voodoo, as France is a catholic country.
So by definition the Lukumiism entails rejecting Xtianity from the religious practices of the Lukumi.
Allow me to digress
It has been stated on this forum that part of the recipe for a rogacion is holy water. This is wrong.
Rogacion is a form of calming one’s head. The head is calmed by feeding it whatever it wants. It is comfort eating for one’s head where Ori dwells. Why would any head of a follower of the Lukumi want to have holy water on it??? Again no Olorisha should be going anywhere near Holy water as it is redundant. Anyway It is a stretch to go from Rogacion to the blanket statement quoted above.
But to get back to the point
Now folk catholicism is not the came as Catholicism it is magical for a start and does not need churches or priests.
What is clear also is that many chatters do not know a thing about the social aspects of the Church in Developing countries especially back in the day. I lived in South America and it was espected that people went ot church as a social obligation. I made a mild stir as I decided not to go. The simple fact was that everyone wanted to meet me. A priest would comment if they doid not see you at church. You could be out whoring, gambling, fighting and drinking from Friday to early Sunday morning but you were not a bad person if you made it to church (even if stale drunk) on Sunday morning! Go figure.
The Santeros also fell into this social trap in pre Castro Cuba as they were only human. Given the negative view that was held of the religion as evidenced by even the early writing of the father of Cuban Ethnography (Fernando Ortiz) there was also a PR element of going to church. It is easy for chatters to pass comment in 2012 but remember that most of these people have never left the USA!
As an Oluwo I have never been taken to the Church either as an Olorisha or babalawo. I have never used Holy water in an exorcism or in any preparation. I have never taken anyone to church.
In fact anytime I hear anyone trying to link Xtianity to Lukumi you can bet that they are an outsider to the religion.
Truth be known I do not even know which catholic saint represents my Orisha as frankly it is completely irrelevant.
I am just countering the nonsense that has been posted.
Rgds
Pablo