(Maikoiyo Alley-Barnes, (Sparkles) Recollection of Wraith, 2012, Image Still. Image courtesy of artist)
The traditional religions of Africa (e.g., E. B. Idowu, African Traditional Religion: A Definition (Orbis Books, 1973)) have been enjoying a period of renaissance both within and outside Africa. Like Africa itself, the traditional religions of the continent are quite diverse and all subtle and complex, in sync with the history, traditional, and cultures form which they emerged,. But the traditional religions of Africa have spread as far as the African diaspora. As Africa's traditional religious traditions took root in new homelands, each has itself adjusted its traditions and practices to suit its history and the traditions of disasporic African communities as they have become embedded within the living histories of the nations of which they now form an important part. In the Spanish colonial Western Hemisphere, Cuba and Brazil proved to be quite fertile ground for the thew old religions in new context.
One of the most interesting and most misunderstood (and as well among the most caricatured) of the religious traditions of Africa naturalized in places like Cuba are those known in the Western Hemisphere as Palo, Palo Mayombe, Monte, Briyumba (or Brillumba), and Kimbisa, and other names. The Spanish word palo "stick" was applied to the religion in Cuba due to the use of wooden sticks in the preparation of religious objects (in Cuba sometimes cauldrons or other objects), which were also sometimes called Nganga, although that term could also refer to the practitioner who could use the object in the practice of the faith. The core of the practice finds its traditional home in what is now known as the Congo. Palo Cristiano represents the encounter between traditional Palo and (mostly) Catholic Christianity, while Palo Judio retains a more purely Congolese religious expression.
Negarra A. Kudumu has recently completed a four part series on Palo as a liberatory and healing technology. The essays are well worth reading and provide a richness of connections to much of the roots of the basic premises from out which ways of understanding the world and engaging with it in societal organization emerges (e.g., The Constitution as Nkisi). Ms. Kudumu has kindly given me permission to re-post the essays here at Law at the End of the Day. They follow below (along with the links to the original posting): (1) Palo: a liberatory, healing technology (Part I); (2) Legibility, Palo Aesthetics, and Healing (Part II); (3) Upholding Palo's Integrity (Part III); and (4) Notes on Spiritual Attack and Warfare (part IV and series final).Ms. Kudumu is an independent scholar, published writer, and healer working at the intersection of art and healing with a focus on contemporary art from Africa, South Asia, and their respective diasporas as well as African Diasporic knowledge systems. She holds the title of Yayi Nkisi Malongo in the Brama Con Brama lineage of Palo Mayombe; she is a lay person in the Lukumi Pimienta lineage; a practitioner of Espiritismo Cruzado, and a level II Reiki practitioner. Ms. Kudumu's blog may be accessed here. Homepage here. Both pix are from Ms. Kudumu's website.
Palo: a liberatory, healing technology (Part I)
As a formally trained social scientist, and a Capricorn with HELLA Virgo in her chart, I am going to start with historical context because clarity is important and I do not condone ahistoricity. I am an active proponent of citationality and so I will foreground this text and this series by mentioning the scholars and scholar-practitioners whose research and lived experience inform my thoughts: Teisha Shaw, Ernesto Mercer, Kimbwandènde Kia Bunseki Fu-Kiau, Robert Farris Thomas, Stephan Palmie, Quentin Nolet de Brauwere, and Linda Heywood.
DefinitionsFor the sake of this discussion, the following terms will be used in the following way.
- Las Reglas Bantu: Bantu Rites. A term used synonymously with Palo to refer to all branches of the initiatory rites
- Palo: an umbrella term used to refer generally to all the branches of the initiatory rites also called Las Reglas Bantu, also sometimes referred to as Palo Monte
All other terms will be defined in the text.
Socio-historical Context
Palo or Las Reglas Bantu is a spiritual tradition conceived and born on Cuban soil comprised of an amalgam of beliefs contributed by Bantu peoples of various ethnic groups who were enslaved in their African homelands and brought to Cuba. These individuals came from the Kingdom of Ndongo and Matamba (Queen Nzinga’s territories), the Bakongo empire with it’s seat at Sao Salvador in present day northern Angola, the Kingdom of Loango, and various other territories of West Central and Central Africa.
These individuals were members of highly organized and cosmopolitan civilizations who were no strangers to war. Queen Nzinga is an excellent example of this. She is notable among all historical leaders of the African continent, particular for the prowess she exhibited at outsmarting the Portuguese where diplomacy and war games were concerned. She employed the Imbangala, who were known for their thoroughly vicious warfare tactics namely cannibalism, against the Portuguese. Due to slavery, the Imbangala were dispersed throughout the Americas to the United States, the Caribbean, and Latin America. Where you find quilombos, you have traces literal and figurative of the Imbangala. I say all this to say, Bantu people knew warfare and militancy before being enslaved and sent across the Atlantic.
Palo’s antecedent cultural contributors were acutely aware of the realities of mpasi (suffering) meaning, they took mpasi as par for the course and understood it as a function of being alive in the world. They also understood it as a state of being that was aberrant and needed to be resolved. They did so through their spiritual practices, most notably a society called Kimpasi, which consisted of healer specialists that came together for the sole purpose of resolving mpasi.
Palo, as we know it, in its more or less contemporary form, developed in Cuba during the latter part of the 19th century around the time of the Ten Years War, 1868-1878; Cuban abolition of slavery, 1886; the Cuban War for Independence, 1895-1898; and the early part of the 20th century during the time of the Negro Rebellion of 1912. A notable group of Black soldiers referred to as the Mambises fought valiantly and aggressively in these wars and are purported, though this information does not seem to be readily accessible, to have been practitioners of Las Reglas Bantu, but also Bantu spiritualist practices such as Bembe de Sao.
Palo was conceived and birthed in a wholly violent social environment that considered and treated African people as non-human and continued to do so even after slavery ended and Cuba won its independence from Spain. Palo is about liberation through and through. In colonial Cuba, it was a tool that Afro-Cubans used to free themselves from physical slavery. In post-colonial Cuba it was used by its adherents to survive in a society that, as exemplified by the Negro Rebellion of 1912, had no regard for Black Cuban life.
Palo, as we know it, in its more or less contemporary form, developed in Cuba during the latter part of the 19th century around the time of the Ten Years War, 1868-1878; Cuban abolition of slavery, 1886; the Cuban War for Independence, 1895-1898; and the early part of the 20th century during the time of the Negro Rebellion of 1912. A notable group of Black soldiers referred to as the Mambises fought valiantly and aggressively in these wars and are purported, though this information does not seem to be readily accessible, to have been practitioners of Las Reglas Bantu, but also Bantu spiritualist practices such as Bembe de Sao.
Palo was conceived and birthed in a wholly violent social environment that considered and treated African people as non-human and continued to do so even after slavery ended and Cuba won its independence from Spain. Palo is about liberation through and through. In colonial Cuba, it was a tool that Afro-Cubans used to free themselves from physical slavery. In post-colonial Cuba it was used by its adherents to survive in a society that, as exemplified by the Negro Rebellion of 1912, had no regard for Black Cuban life.
It is a tradition of a specific time (the colonial period and slavery era) and place (Cuba) that continues to adapt to the time and place in which it finds itself. Palo emerged as a technology for Black life to persist. It exists still, for that reason: persisting, particularly going beyond simple survival, into thrive mode. In order to thrive, we’ve got to heal and healing can only happen once suffering is unrooted. Palo’s specialty par excellence, in my estimation, is healing. It is a toolkit, a technology, and a multitude of methodologies for healing. It is through healing that liberation becomes visible and thus possible.
I think I shall leave it here for now. The next post is on October 31 and is an art one. I am going to look at some Palo aesthetics but also share with you a few modern and contemporary artists who pushed Palo to the fore through their works.
I think I shall leave it here for now. The next post is on October 31 and is an art one. I am going to look at some Palo aesthetics but also share with you a few modern and contemporary artists who pushed Palo to the fore through their works.
Negarra A. Kudumu
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Legibility, Palo Aesthetics, and Healing (Part II)
Though this article has a different title than the previous, it is part two of a possibly 4-part series, which will consider Palo as a liberatory, healing technology. This week we’re delving into aesthetics looking both at Bantu arts on the continent of Africa (e.g. nkisi nkondi, divination masks, etc) and three Cuban artists who incorporated Palo aesthetics into their work. First, I want to tackle the issue of legibility.
As with the previous article, Las Reglas Bantu, Palo, and occasionally the term Palo Monte, are, for the sake of this article, used interchangeably. When I am referring specifically to the rama (branch) I practice I will use the term Palo Mayombe and reference my ngao (lineage), Brama Con Brama.
In an Instagram post I made on Monday of this week, I referenced Glissant’s text The Poetics of Relations where he states,
In an Instagram post I made on Monday of this week, I referenced Glissant’s text The Poetics of Relations where he states,
If we examine the process of "understanding" people and ideas from the perspective of Western thought, we discover that its basis is this requirement for transparency. In order to understand and thus accept you, I have to measure your solidity with the ideal scale providing me with grounds to make comparisons and, perhaps, judgments. I have to reduce.
Where Palo is concerned it is sometimes hard to tell whether the opacity came first or the refusal to be reduced, either way both are there and both are two of the tradition’s basic rules of engagement. Palo does not purport to be universal nor does it assume that everyone has the aptitude to be an adherent. While it is an initiation-centric tradition, Las Reglas Bantu holds rigid guidelines for who has the right to initiate and those guidelines are enforced alongside others within a given munanso (spiritual house).
In short, as I said here, Palo is not for everyone. It is a secret society and its practitioners, as a general rule, uphold the secrecy that keeps lurkers, wannabes, and other categories of non-practitioners in the dark. This is evidenced by the lack of reliable information about the inner workings of Palo rituals and the intentionally coded language in which many scholars and practitioners speak about Palo, especially if they are initiated.
The 21st century is an interesting time to be a practitioner of Las Reglas Bantu because in this world of social media and likes and influence, one acquires social cachet precisely by being legible. I often wonder with the degree of legibility exhibited online, by individuals purporting to be healers, if healing is actually taking place. From a Palo perspective, the most generative healing happens in the opaque, both literal and figurative. Deep in the kindembo, the lango, at the edge of kalunga (the sea) illuminated by ngonda (the moon). These are spaces where Palo happens and only those with licencia (license) and those being healed, may be present. The potency of the opaque is precisely the space needed to call up the energies needed to assess ones issues and then prepare and execute ones solution. As such, legibility, by definition, is diametrically opposed to the tradition.
This opacity gets even more interesting when translated into art, particularly African antiquities of Bantu Kongo origin. In the mind of the viewer, who is almost always approaching these from a western perspective, which has normalized treating non-European art (and non-European people for that matter) as primitive, these works translate as horrifying, aggressive, and diabolical. That accompanied with an anthropological assessment (in the form of scholarly books, wall, and label texts in museum contexts) of these works that minimally misunderstands, if not misrepresents the religio-spiritual traditions of which these objects are a part, these works present as something that is a far cry from what they actually are. Interesting aside (in case you weren’t already clear): these works, despite their aesthetic prowess, were not created as works of art. They were created to carry out spiritual acts as determined through divination.
This opacity gets even more interesting when translated into art, particularly African antiquities of Bantu Kongo origin. In the mind of the viewer, who is almost always approaching these from a western perspective, which has normalized treating non-European art (and non-European people for that matter) as primitive, these works translate as horrifying, aggressive, and diabolical. That accompanied with an anthropological assessment (in the form of scholarly books, wall, and label texts in museum contexts) of these works that minimally misunderstands, if not misrepresents the religio-spiritual traditions of which these objects are a part, these works present as something that is a far cry from what they actually are. Interesting aside (in case you weren’t already clear): these works, despite their aesthetic prowess, were not created as works of art. They were created to carry out spiritual acts as determined through divination.
I am really intrigued by modern and contemporary art that leverages a Palo aesthetic. It appears that the artists who create these kinds of works are already hip to the hype and facade of the legibility hustle, and thus they leave the works to speak for themselves. I am referring specifically to three Cuban artists - Wifredo Lam, Tania Bruguera, and Jose Bedia - whose works are pictured above.
In my recent thinking about legibility in both healing and art, I have returned several times to artist, Tiona McClodden’s words about her current gallery show Hold on, let me take the safety off,
It is extremely exhausting. I refuse to edit myself, to revise for legibility. I prefer the poetic. This is my mind in its best form. Don’t fill in the gaps for me. It is complete.
When thinking about McClodden’s words in relation to healing, legibility (like its cousin visibility) becomes a trap. In proving that one can be interpreted as healed, one is not necessarily actively doing their healing work. Rather, one is offering themselves up to be interpreted as healed, which permits reduction because that offering is inevitability for the purpose of being accepted as a normalized standard. From my vantage point, being legible and it’s resultant reduction always runs the risk of undoing any healing work that might have taken place within the confines of the opaque. Legibility, even obligatory legibility, in our 21st century world, especially for those of us prioritizing healing, necessitates a return to the opaque in order to heal from the inherently reductionist nature of legibility.
Las Reglas Bantu remain secret and actively opaque and thus non-legible, because they center healing first and always. When you give some time to that thought, be you an adherent of Palo or not, you begin to think about your healing in an entirely different light. I urge you to consider it.
Las Reglas Bantu remain secret and actively opaque and thus non-legible, because they center healing first and always. When you give some time to that thought, be you an adherent of Palo or not, you begin to think about your healing in an entirely different light. I urge you to consider it.
Link to part I.
Negarra A. Kudumu
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Nkisi Nkondi Kozo
Upholding Palo's Integrity (Part III)
in Healing
This is part three of a 4-part series, which discusses Palo as a liberatory and healing technology. This week we’re delving into the notion that Palo is an integral tradition that needs nothing else to help it, explain it, or improve it, and problematizes the ways in which Palo has been subjected to culturally supremacist thought and practices.
As with the previous article, Las Reglas Bantu, Palo, and the term Palo Monte, are, for the sake of this article, used interchangeably. When I am referring specifically to the rama (branch) I practice, I will use the term Palo Mayombe and reference my ngao (lineage), Brama Con Brama. Non-english terms will be italicized and defined in parentheticals with the exception of Las Reglas Bantu, Palo, Palo Monte, and Palo Mayombe, which have already been defined above.
I am proud of my spiritual tradition and I will always sing its praises; however, I am not here to prove anything to anyone about Palo. Palo is the proof, the whole proof, and nothing but the proof every time. I am here to bring those proofs to bear in the way I experience them: through the intersection of study and practice. That said, today’s post is my take on a conversation I’ve been hearing over the course of my almost ten years of initiation, and one which I think is necessary to keep having amongst communities of African Diasporic spiritual practitioners, especially those of us who practice Afro-Cuban traditions.
As with the previous article, Las Reglas Bantu, Palo, and the term Palo Monte, are, for the sake of this article, used interchangeably. When I am referring specifically to the rama (branch) I practice, I will use the term Palo Mayombe and reference my ngao (lineage), Brama Con Brama. Non-english terms will be italicized and defined in parentheticals with the exception of Las Reglas Bantu, Palo, Palo Monte, and Palo Mayombe, which have already been defined above.
I am proud of my spiritual tradition and I will always sing its praises; however, I am not here to prove anything to anyone about Palo. Palo is the proof, the whole proof, and nothing but the proof every time. I am here to bring those proofs to bear in the way I experience them: through the intersection of study and practice. That said, today’s post is my take on a conversation I’ve been hearing over the course of my almost ten years of initiation, and one which I think is necessary to keep having amongst communities of African Diasporic spiritual practitioners, especially those of us who practice Afro-Cuban traditions.
Many practitioners of Afro-Cuban traditions [still] throw Palo into the spiritual pot from which they pull a melange of things. This things end up being Palo-like, and are often not at all Palo, They are a far cry from the healing technology and tradition that Palo actually is. The Palo-ish thing they end up with is something that is negotiated, mitigated, interpreted, and ultimately controlled by individuals who are not Tatas (male Palo priests) or Yayis (female Palo priests). Often, they are priests of other traditions that are vastly different from Palo. Or, they are Yayis and Tatas who have allowed their practice of Palo to become subservient to the other traditions they practice. Whatever the scenario, the reality is that these byproducts are generally a glimmer, at best, of the original. At best, these byproducts are degraded dilutions. They are - within the context of the teachings of my Tikan Tikan (priestess who initiated me), my munanso (Palo spiritual house) and my ngao (lineage) - not Palo.
Some of the most ostentatious things of this nature that I have heard of and witnessed fall under the following categories:
Some of the most ostentatious things of this nature that I have heard of and witnessed fall under the following categories:
- The assertion that Orisha (the deities of the Afro-Cuban Lukumi tradition) or Egun (ancestors in Afro-Cuban Lukumi tradition) are too good/too clean to be sullied by doing works considered dirty or malevolent and thus, defaulting to Palo, which like Haitian Vodou, has long been considered black magic, evil, and malignant. This is a problem precisely because it places Palo in the position of subservience to Lukumi rather than being treated as its own tradition with its own methodologies and solutions. In conversations on this very topic with several Lukumi priests, they told me that any Lukumi initiate upholding this claim, doesn’t know how to work their Orisha.
- Changing long established pacts and agreements concerning Palo ceremony to meet the needs of another tradition, typically Lukumi. This one is particularly contentious as the only people with the license to establish new pacts and agreements in Palo are Palo priests.
- The issuance of taboos through divination in Lukumi that [attempt to] mandate what a person, who is already a Palo priest, can do with Palo. Facenda (Palo Kikongo for bullshit)!
In order to practice Palo, you must first know that what you are working is indeed Palo. You can only know that if you are working and studying Palo under the tutelage of a reputable and knowledgeable Palo practitioner who, despite whatever other traditions he or she is involved in, practices Palo integrally. From there, you need to know the general history, the history of the lineage of which you are part, the entities that pertain to it, and the pacts and agreements that structure it. You need to know the language and the code. After you learn those things, then you need to put them into practice repeatedly. You would not study Portuguese to learn Chinese, so you should not study, nor accept counsel of, any other wholly unrelated tradition to learn and practice Palo.
As I have stated numerous times, here and elsewhere, Palo has never purported to be universal. Initiation is not for everyone and the need for initiation isn’t the only measuring stick used to determine if a person will actually get initiated. You won’t find lengthy explications of our divination systems or ceremonies in print or online. Many texts that reference Palo, directly or indirectly, are either inaccurate or only accurate within the confines of the lineage and munanso from which the explications originate.
As I have stated numerous times, here and elsewhere, Palo has never purported to be universal. Initiation is not for everyone and the need for initiation isn’t the only measuring stick used to determine if a person will actually get initiated. You won’t find lengthy explications of our divination systems or ceremonies in print or online. Many texts that reference Palo, directly or indirectly, are either inaccurate or only accurate within the confines of the lineage and munanso from which the explications originate.
Palo priests are known for being picky, harsh, and secretive. Any priesthood born from a need to combat enslavement and foment liberation maintains those characteristics among it’s adherents. Healing and liberation are extremely valuable and contested states in a social environment that depends on your being unhealed and shackled (literally or figuratively). Somewhere amongst healing and liberation is a return to peace and wholeness. If you knew how valuable your peace was, you too would be harsh when it was threatened.
We do our best to maintain our traditions in secret because opacity allows our works to manifest and transform. We assert the right to intentional non-legibility because the byproduct of legibility in the social environment of the past 500 years is reducibility. Look no further than the transatlantic slave trade, slavery, apartheid, and violence against black, brown, and poor people in the postcolonial world and in the alleged post-racial world.
Where African-diasporic, and specifically Afro-Cuban spiritual traditions are concerned, the aforementioned bulleted examples constitute reductionism. There is no healing where there is reduction. We all benefit, regardless of our chosen tradition, from maintaining the integrity of our traditions. In the instances where that integrity has been compromised, it would behoove us to use the protocols of our tradition to investigate its original practices and where appropriate, re-establish pacts and agreements without concern for the realities of another wholly unrelated tradition. I am aware this is not the popular response; however, it is doable. Our spiritual and blood line ancestors maintained these traditions under conditions far more oppressive than 21st century realities. I urge you to consider it.
Links to parts II and I.
Where African-diasporic, and specifically Afro-Cuban spiritual traditions are concerned, the aforementioned bulleted examples constitute reductionism. There is no healing where there is reduction. We all benefit, regardless of our chosen tradition, from maintaining the integrity of our traditions. In the instances where that integrity has been compromised, it would behoove us to use the protocols of our tradition to investigate its original practices and where appropriate, re-establish pacts and agreements without concern for the realities of another wholly unrelated tradition. I am aware this is not the popular response; however, it is doable. Our spiritual and blood line ancestors maintained these traditions under conditions far more oppressive than 21st century realities. I urge you to consider it.
Links to parts II and I.
Negarra A. Kudumu
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Soldiers of the South
African Native Labour Corps seen doing a ‘Zulu war dance’ during a
sports day at Dannes, 24th June 1917.© IWM (Q 2388)
Notes on Spiritual Attack and Warfare (part IV and series final)
in Healing
This is the fourth and final part of a 4-part series, which considers Palo as a liberatory and healing technology. For this final installment, I’m delving into the hotly contested and ongoing, mostly closed door conversations around spiritual attack and warfare. This will be an interesting discussion to be sure and I am going to follow it up with an IG live so we can discuss in person.
That said… ahem
If you are any kind of practitioner of the spiritual arts, you will at some point be on the receiving end, justly or unjustly, of spiritual attack. Why? Because humans are reactionary and when they decide to act from an emotional place, they often do antisocial things. Often, people want to know why they are on the receiving end of spiritual attack or embroiled in spiritual warfare. Here are a few considerations that I have observed. This is not an exhaustive list.
That said… ahem
If you are any kind of practitioner of the spiritual arts, you will at some point be on the receiving end, justly or unjustly, of spiritual attack. Why? Because humans are reactionary and when they decide to act from an emotional place, they often do antisocial things. Often, people want to know why they are on the receiving end of spiritual attack or embroiled in spiritual warfare. Here are a few considerations that I have observed. This is not an exhaustive list.
- jealousy;
- sociopathy and psychopathy;
- a need to test another individual’s spiritual skills;
- coercion e.g. one person persuades another, often under duress, to launch a spiritual attack against a third party;
- misplaced emotion;
- in defense of some ideal or person they hold dear;
- mess e.g. let me go drop this in the middle of a room and see who catches it and let me disguise it so no one knows I did it; and
- generations’ old feuds within or between families and social groups
Spiritual attack is designed to get you off your game. Spiritual attack and warfare can also definitely have nefarious intent and outcomes; however, when the warring factions are not equally yoked (and this is the case more often than we realize), it’s often akin to two toddlers fighting until one cries and whines the loudest and needs an adult to make it better while the other is looking around like “he started it”. The symptoms of spiritual attack vary depending on the skill of the person doing the attacking. I will not elucidate them here but arguably the most important lesson one can glean from spiritual attack and warfare is the vulnerabilities it highlights - both yours and those of your opponents - as well as the way it informs the direction one charts with one’s priesthood and/or spiritual practice.
Spiritual attack and warfare reveal to us the areas of our lives where we need to dedicate more attention. These lessons force us to learn how to implement and execute more efficacious spiritual protection through our relationships with our ancestors and the entities we work with. It also illuminates the ebbs and flows of human nature. Humans can be sociable and well-adjusted. Humans can be misanthropic.
Speaking from my experience, we spend the early years of our initiatory lives learning to navigate our priesthood. That navigation includes a major shedding of all the external things that no longer serve us through just simply letting the mpungo and muerto do their work. There is a certain kind of visibility to that work that others see, that perhaps you may not realize, and that may be interpreted as threatening or egotistical. As a result, someone sees fit to put you in your place - insert spiritual attack here.
Spiritual attack and warfare reveal to us the areas of our lives where we need to dedicate more attention. These lessons force us to learn how to implement and execute more efficacious spiritual protection through our relationships with our ancestors and the entities we work with. It also illuminates the ebbs and flows of human nature. Humans can be sociable and well-adjusted. Humans can be misanthropic.
Speaking from my experience, we spend the early years of our initiatory lives learning to navigate our priesthood. That navigation includes a major shedding of all the external things that no longer serve us through just simply letting the mpungo and muerto do their work. There is a certain kind of visibility to that work that others see, that perhaps you may not realize, and that may be interpreted as threatening or egotistical. As a result, someone sees fit to put you in your place - insert spiritual attack here.
Part of the skill set of a priest is learning how to quickly and efficiently free yourself from the grips of spiritual attack and warfare. You learn that through the practice of it. There is no other way. That practice involves not only learning how to create and execute efficacious spiritual retorts, but also to help you figure out the kind of priest you want to be: Do you want to be the big bad priest/brujo crafting everyone down all the time? Or do you want to be known for finishing the war one time and recommitting to your healing?
Once you reach the point of clarity as to the kind of priest you want to be, then your next step is cultivating that. If you desire to be the baddest brujo who crafts everyone down all the time and who spends your years recovering from and then initiating ongoing attack, may the force be with you. I hope you can acquire what you need to stay afloat underneath all the attack and warfare. If you desire to be a healing-centric priest, then you learn how to efficaciously handle your opposition so that you can pursue a healing trajectory.
Believe it or not, there does come a point in the priesthood where the attack minimizes and it minimizes not because people stop attacking because as my brilliant godmother always says, “people will always throw at you”. Rather, it minimizes because core to your healing is your spiritual protection and if you are healing centric, your protection must be at the highest possible level at all times. It also means, that you choose your battles and execute your strategies wisely.
After the deluge that is the external shedding of the early years of one’s priesthood, for those of us choosing a healing trajectory, you then move into a space where the internal shedding must begin. You start to do works on yourself to heal one’s interior issues - some done by yourself to yourself as well as things you inherited as a result of the lineage you were born into. This work becomes more important than anything else because as the healing unfolds, you transform and become stronger.
The point of Palo is healing and liberation. Liberation presumes a need to free yourself from something that is encumbering you. Approaching liberation with healing in mind, we know that some of that encumbering is external - in the form of spiritual attack and warfare - and other of it is internal. If we are always mired down in attach and warfare, then we can never prioritize our healing. Prioritizing healing, from a Palo perspective necessitates being an expert strategist who’s pre-emptive works are as powerful if not more powerful than the retaliatory ones. When we preempt via protection, and retaliate strategically, we have room to prioritize healing. Prioritizing healing is what brings liberation and thus the ability to manifest the quality of life you desire.
If you need inspiration to help you become healing centric, take a look at the people who have chosen a life of frequent attack and warfare. If that doesn’t light the healing fire under your a**, I don’t know what will.
Thank you for sticking with me through this 4-part series. I hope you have enjoyed it. Join me at 6:15 pm PST on Thursday, January 30 for an Instagram live where I will answer these and other questions on the topic. For links to parts one, two, and three of this series see here: III, II and I.
Negarra A. Kudumu
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