I’m always soaring in love all ova again when summer comes round. every year in tdot has been filled with kindred spirits en honourable ones that have had me calling turtle island my new home going on a decade now, en dis year has been di most magical one yet…na always there’s the pull back to my true-true nyumbas, the fresh-off-di-boat immigrant experience with a queer twist, like di spaces between belonging na self (!) imposed exile…..
I heart tdot for the balms of evolving Pride weeks, Afro & Jazz fests, en divine zawadis like free Queen of Soul concerts on a Friday nite in di heart of downtown. nashukuru di revolushun being documented with Back To Our Roots Press; en i heart tdot massives for y/our swagger…
We will be performing a ritual to honour Yemoja. Yemaya is personalized as a woman ebony of colour with full large breasts who nurtures the world. From myths, her early incarnation on earth was that of passive energy in di creation process. She evolved into the strong, dominant earth mother after experiencing trials of disrespect and at times violence.
According to a Pataki, Yemonja’s response to a repugnant act that occurred against her was to plunge from a hill to the earth. This act caused her stomach to burst open from which sprang the sixteen orisas and the first human man and woman. The fluids that came forth from her produced the rivers, lakes and seas.
Yemonja teaches us to persevere despite what life brings us.
Yemoja’s colors are in the range of blue and white dependent upon her avatar or path. Her number is 7.
Please feel free to bring your drum or shaker and join in.
Or just dance and enjoy the music.
Appropriate offerings are he-goat, ram, turtles, rooster, quail, pigeons, guinea hens and all hunted animals. Feel free to bring any other food you may want to share for the feast afterward.
Dancing is the movement of di oceans/ di caress of many lovers in canyons laced wit poppies in coca
leaves/dancing in union of spirits layed to rest among splinterin shells n fires of adoration in di heat of comets and volcanoes/dancin is how i love/how i share carin/how did mama say it….
A gender dance. A dance of ovaries en cervix/uncovered and swelling, menses falling like waterfalls in a golden forest. A dance of women discovering themselves in di universe. She. Her. Hers…..
Cypress was initiated into di new world not quite as herself…the true martriarch who is di woman-powerful, was to be nurtured….here there were only mothers and daughters. ”Mothers” were supreme, there was no higher honour than to be deemed “mother”, yet this had nothing to do with biological offspring….
Ni hapa that the most important step in our spiritual development is taken. Can you imagine setting out on a journey with no destination in mind? Writing a novel without a theme to give unity to di multiplicity of scenarios and actions? An educational system without a curriculum? Yet, dis is di manner in which all wo/men live without a true system of initiation. It’s the effect of taking di person as one’s identity……kama….
……she is Yemanja or Sofia, which is to say divine wisdom en powah, embracing all the universes. That is…why her eternal person, which is the secret of the world of the soul, is also its manifestation without which the creative principle of the world would remain unknown and unknowable, forever hidden….
Revised excerpts from Sassafrass, Cypress & Indigo; Metu Neter Vol.1 and a Mazdean Sufi
Molisa wa NyaKale 