Orunmila!
Elérí Ípin, Ìbikeji Olódumarè, A-je-jù-Oògùn, Obìriti, A-p'ijó-ikú-da,
Olúwa mi, A-to-i-ba-j'ayé, Òrò à-bi-kú-j'igbo, Olúwa mi, Ajiki, Ógégé
a-gb'ayé-gún; Odúdú ti nídú orí emèrè; A-tún-orí-tí-kò sunwòn se,
A-mo-i-kú. Olówa Aiyere, Agiri Ilé-Ilógbón; Olúwa mi; amoimotán, A kò mo
O tàn kose, A ba mo tàn kose, A bà mo tán ìbà se ke. [Orunmila, the
witness of our fate, Second to Olodumaré, you are more effective than
medicine, You are the immense presence that avoids the day of death,
Lord
Almighty save us, mysterious spirit that battles death. Salutations
are due you first in the morning, for you are the force than produces
equilibrium among the forces on Earth, you are the one than can
reconstruct the creature whose lot in life is bad, you are the
repairer
of bad luck, those who come to you encounter immortality. Lord and
undeposable ruler, perfection in the house of wisdom, Lord infinite in
knowledge, we who fail to know you fully will fail, if we could but
know
you fully, all would be well with us.] (Afolabi A Epiga and John
Philip Niemark, The Sacred Ifa Oracle (Brooklyn, NY: Athelia Henrietta Press, 1995))
So begins the invocations of the Babalawós of IFA to Orunmila,
that divine manifestation of wisdom and the conduit through which such
wisdom is sometimes made available to humanity. Such wisdom is, as is
traditional in many places and among many cultures, oracular. It is
provided through manifested by other divine manifestations, in the case
of IFA, through Ellegua/Esu, the tricky and quite moody divine
manifestation of divine
spirit of connection, before the work of divination, of connection to
the divine, may be commenced.
Since 2012 I
have written of the annual letter of the Cuban Council of the High
Priests of Ifá (Consejo Cubano De Sacerdotes Mayores De Ifá),
the practitioners of traditional religion brought over from West Africa
with the slave trade and now naturalized as a powerful indigenous
religion throughout the Caribbean and now growing in the United States. (e.g., 2024, 2023, 2022; 2021; 2020; 2019; 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015; 2014; 2013; 2012).
* * * * * *
Every religion connects the structures of divinity to the human
communities around which their worship is structured and social,
political, economic, and cultural communities are organized. To that
end, the priestly caste platys a very specific role as mediator,
interpreter, and as the incarnation of a social order grounded in divine
principles and rules.
In most states, the priestly role has been transformed. But it is
useful, as one examines the priestly role in modern western states, to
consider a more traditional relationship between the priest and the
state. One of the more interesting manifestations of the role of
religion within political life is that of the priests of the
practitioners of the old religions of Africa as re-established in the
Western Hemisphere, particularly in Marxist-Leninist Cuba. (here)
That priestly role is exercised in very specific ways among the great
traditions of Western Religions: Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. It
shows a more variegated vigor among Non-Western religious traditions.
These are well known. Yet most of these have sought to marginalize the
great traditions of African religions as a barbaric variant of primitive
idol worship that had been suppressed elsewhere. And yet those
religious traditions remain as vibrant, their theologies as complex, and
their practices as rich as those other religious traditions that have
sought over many centuries to supplant them.
Systems of divination have also been attached to and express religion for a very long time. Divination takes many forms. They have one thing in common--their systems represent a concise mapping of the cognitive universe within which the community of the faithful can understand the world around them and the processes, principles and patterns through which it manifests itself and operates. In contemporary spaces, the role of religious divination has been taken by descriptive and predictive analytics--by the virtual built on the foundations of the simulacra of a reality which it is meant to mimic and from which it is possible to time travel virtually (Jean Baudrillard, Simulacra and Simulation (U Mich Press, 1994; Alfred W. Criosby, The Measure of Reality: Quantification and Western Society 1250-1600 (CUP, 1997)). One might even be tempted to suggest that these systems even add the divine element with the introduction of generative artificial intelligence as the driver of predictive divination. More traditional systems of divination attempt to set out in text and image the way in which their own worlds are ordered and the pathways and markers of cognition are constructed, and realized through deep embedding in the ordinary course of the lives of social collectives. Prominent among them is the Book of Changes--the I Ching, born during the shaman period of Ancient China, and organically embedded in and as Tao and Confucian overlays, serving as philosophy, religion, oracle and Dao (Benebell We, I Ching: The Oracle (North Atlantic Books, 2023)). The Ifa follows its own contextually driven path as divination and as the expression of a system of cognition principles around which the world is rationalized and perception ordered (Hermeneutics (Interpretation): The Ifa Concept of Cosmology as the Basis for Divination; Celebrating Black History Month 2024 in the US--The Ifa Divination System in the Western Hemisphere).
To
realize that objective, at the start of every year the leaders of the great
indigenous religion of Cuba conduct, through a series of ceremonies, a
general divination for the country. And so it was in the early
hours of the 1st of January that leaders of the various branches of the
Afro-Cuban religious communities met. The results of that divination, and
its advice, is organized into a "Letter of the Year" (
Letra del Año) (on the history of the
Letras del año see HERE (
Historia de la Ceremonia de la Letra del Año )).
La letra indica que es lo que comunican los Orichas a las família de santo
y creyentes, como les irá en el transcurso del año en curso, y lo que
deberán hacer para que, las posibles tragedias venideras no los agarre
tan desprevenidos. Por esa letra, se regirán todos los familiares de ese
ilé (casa) sin excepción, durante todo ese año, y en ella quedan
determinados cuales limpiezas (Ebbós) deben hacerse todos los miembros. [
The
letter indicates what the Orishas communicate to the orisha communities
and uninitiated believers (the laity), how they will fare in the course
of the current year, and what they must do so that possible coming
tragedies do not catch them so unprepared. The
letter serves without exception as the rules and instructions that
serve as the basis for the governance (and guidance) of those religious
communities, each ilé (house), throughout that year, and in it are
determined which cleanings (Ebbós) all the members should undertake.] (
EcuRed, Letra del Año)).
The object of the annual letter is to provide guidance for the
nation and its people, as well as more technical advice for the orisha communities of initiates and believers. More specifically it is meant to provide
guidance for faith practitioners otherwise unable to receive more
specific guidance within their own branch.
Traditionally
each of the major houses provided their own annual divination. In Cuba
a process of consolidation resulted in agreement among the major houses
for a major joint divination and the production of a single national
augury. The year 2021 marked the 6th year of an important change, in
which many of the
most important branches of the faith came together to produce a unified
letter under the aegis of the Asociación Cultural Yoruba de Cuba (ACYC). It also marked the last year of that union. The
rupture was a long time coming. In 2019 there was some confusion over
the authenticity of the Letter of the Year with two appearing in the
early hours of the new year. That was cleared up but not to everyone's
satisfaction. 2020 proved to be a more difficult year. It caused the IFA
practitioners to change their divination ceremonies in light of the
realities of the pandemic. And indeed, in retrospect, when the Letras del Año for 2021 and 2022 are
read for the ACYC, one can (again in retrospect) understand the
inevitability of that rupture. (For more read an extended discussion in my analysis of the Letra del Año 2024 HERE).
From
2024, however, the various local and regional associations have again
sought movement toward a consolidated augury. Notice of this renewed
union was conveyed 26 December 2023:
A
raíz de diferentes encuentros sostenidos previamente, se efectuó este
26 de Diciembre de 2023, en nuestra sede nacional de Prado 615 entre
Monte y Dragones, municipio Habana Vieja, La Habana; la renovación del
Convenio de Hermanamiento entre las Instituciones Religiosas Bantú de
Cuba y la Asociación Cultural Yoruba de Cuba, representadas por sus
Presidentes los hermanos Aldo Durades Román y Roberto Padrón Silva. Este
nuevo convenio logra un respetuoso entendimiento y reafirma nuestros
lazos históricos, protegiendo diferentes puntos de interés común para
ambas instituciones religiosas, con cuyo hermanamiento, da continuidad a
nuestros vínculos anteriormente suscritos y deja indisolublemente
ligado a dos cultos con raíces y prácticas muy cercanas con origenes
africanos. [As a result of different meetings held previously, it was
held on December 26, 2023, at our national headquarters at Prado 615
between Monte and Dragones, Habana Vieja municipality, Havana; the
renewal of the Partnership Agreement between the Bantu Religious
Institutions of Cuba and the Yoruba Cultural Association of Cuba,
represented by its Presidents, the brothers Aldo Durades Román and
Roberto Padrón Silva. This new agreement achieves a respectful
understanding and reaffirms our historical ties, protecting different
points of common interest for both religious institutions, with whose
twinning, it gives continuity to our previously subscribed ties and
leaves us inextricably linked to two cults with very close roots and
practices. Africans.]
What is also clear is that greater care appears to have been taken to avoid difficulties. As in 2024, the old practice of signalling hints about the oracle have been abandoned: "Sin embargo, hasta ahora, la asociación con sede en Prado #615, entre Monte y Dragones, en La Habana Vieja, no ha emitido señales sobre la predicción para 2025. En
años anteriores, su equipo de comunicación solía ofrecer adelantos o
detalles sobre la reunión de sus miembros para la elaboración de esta
importante revelación." (Periodico Cubano, Letra del Año 2025: las expectativas de la comunidad cubana)
* * * * * *
The
2025 Letter of the Year is interesting especially after several years
of oracular suggestions (2019-2024) of turmoil, explosion, and transformation traveling along pathways that are both conduit and are disrupted and reshaped. It is the year of finalization of the great cycle the unavoidable period of ending of which was introduced by disease (2019) and will end with the establishment of new structures (good and evil) toward which all will be expected to bed the knee. The Letter of the Year (the official version and that of the independistas; Miguel Febres Padron (below) and my own) point to the emergence of emperors and the corruption of order, of liars and of the return of defeated enemies to which victors had shown mercy. This is the year of the sacrifices required for new ordering; and the sacrifices will be painful.
This is echoed in the appearance of the ruling Orishas for the 2025
year; for the Official Letter of the Year they are
Shangó (thunder and lightning, patron of hierarchs and wealth, giver and destroyer of power, order,
hierarchy, institutions) and
Oshun (the bringer and destroyer of
success in enterprise; passion as against the rationality of Shangó);
for Miguel Febres Padron
Odua (royalty and governance) is the reigning Orisha, but supported by
Yewa (mystery, secrecy and the enforcer of divine justice); for me
Ogun (technology, creativity and innovation, violence, war, reordering) and
Eleggua (pathways towards ends or dead ends and the enforcer of justice as he sees it). These are the incarnations around which the predictive analytics of IFA divination is organized. And like prediction analytics that is heavily path dependent on the layering of prior predictions (descriptive analytics), IFA also builds on its own pathways.
Bottom line: The
real surprise was the macro level end-games for total control based on honesty and justice and solidarity, while at the same time the
micro level caution&warning that people are sort of in a shark tank and either
they eat or are eaten as the rules if the game split everyone up into
teams. 2025, then may be understood as a sort of Squid games season 2, one for collectives and one for individuals! For those interested in the full summary of the bottom line, please scroll down to the end of this essay.
Indeed, 2022 saw
much of that
failure to attend to responsibilities, even as the apparatus of state
appeared more decisively secure in the hands of its leaders. 2023 added something new and something old and the intensification of a rational irrationality fueled by passion. Obatalá returned
as the ruling sign--but with a vengeance. The oracles promised reason,
but reason stretched and twisted to (absurd) extremes; with it the wrap
of the irrational. Here the influence of Oshun.
Oshun brought the
heart, and the passion, to the "right" reason of Obatala. Together they
produced moments of reasonable completeness and
resolution of matters and also ignited passion, and an intense
irrational passion that burned one in the fires of the heart. The intensification of both
the mind (Obatalá) and the heart (Oshun) exploded in disastrous synergy, or perhaps worse,
disastrous opposition. And indeed, by the end of
2023, this tendency toward the irrational, inflamed passions (love and
hatred) appeared to consume all levels of social relations.--though its crucible appeared in the 7 October Hamas killing, the regional war it incited, and the irrational exuberance with which the spectators used it as a channel of their own irrationality, fears, etc. Its parallel with similar effects were echoed elsewhere--as everything intensified. If 2023 exploded, 2024 poured gasoline on the fires, intensifying passionate (ir)rationality and moving toward points of transformation from which there could be no return to the stable order before 2019. 2024 was the year in which the wages of the sins of the past, well past due, were collected with interest all intesified by the supra-moral judgment of Eleggua and the intensifying enforcement of Oya, the reigning Orishas. If Eleggua is the guardian of the
pathways, the communicator and the trickster with a long view of justice
and karma, then Oya (lyá Mésàn, Iansã, Yánsán), the spirit incarnated
in and of the tempest, of the release of pressure, of the fierce warrior
is also (like the Valkyries) the guardian of the spirit of the dead,
serves as the harbinger and instrument of change. And that, indeed was what was experienced in the tumult that was 2024 on every level of human individual and collective activity--everything changed and what had been unthinkable began to emerge as inevitable.
The Letra del Año 2025
follows (in Spanish and with English translation) along with
my analysis and discussion (in English). The letter may be accessed in
full on the ACYC Facebook Page (here and here). The Letra del Año of the independistas (Fraternidad Miguel Febres Padron) may be accessed HERE (Odua is the reigning Orisha, but supported by Yewa) (also here).
